Hong Kong trader owns call center firm, suspect claims
A Hong Kong-based businessman is supposedly the owner of a call center office that police said y operates as a mail order bride business in Calderon Compound, Duterte Banawa in Cebu City.
Chinese national Mei Yee (Ma Yee) made the claim as she and a Filipina employee denied that they owned and managed the call center office that was raided in a joint operation last Saturday afternoon.
Charges of estafa and violation of Republic Act 9208 or the Anti-Trafficking in Persons Act of 2003 were filed against both of them in the Cebu City Prosecutor’s Office.
Yee said she “was only asked by the owner” to help train his employees at the Filipino Heart Internet Consultant (FHIC) which operates the online dating site idateasia.com.
“The owner asked for my help to come here in Cebu. He asked me to help his employees to do basic photoshoot, photography and editing. I don’t own that business. I am not even in charge and am no longer connected,” Yee said.
Yee said she had been in Cebu for two years with her 3-year-old daughter. Yee said she learned that Cebu was a good place for her and her daughter to learn English.
She said she has her own photo editing and wedding photography business based in China.
Yee said she lived with her daughter in the same compound.
She said she felt bad when the PNP Anti-Cybercrime Group seized the laptop owned by her little girl.
Her co-accused, 34-year old Ligaya Vitor, denied that she was the manager of FHIC.
“Do you call someone who receives P9,000 a month a manager?” Vitor said.
Vitor said she was just an office clerk who encodes data and arranges papers.
“I have never been into chatting and translating with that online site,” she said.
Vitor said FHIC is not a call center company but a consultancy service.
She said some of the photos taken of the models and posted in the site that were found to be sexy were done with the consent of the models.
The raid was a joint effort by the PNP Anti-Cybercrime Group, the Presidential Anti-Organized Crime Commission (PAOCC) and Inter-Agency Council Against Trafficking (IACAT)./ with Correspondent Chito Aragon
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