After the meeting of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) Undersecretary Joel Montales on Tuesday, January 30, 2018, alerted the public about passport appointment scams involving fraudulent Facebook pages.
Montales revealed the following types of passport appointment scams that DFA official have uncovered.
1. The first type is said to be a pure scam in which scammers fill up the application form for the applicants and put a false barcode into it to trick them that the form has been submitted.
2. The second type involves misleading the patrons to use the courtesy lane and make an appointment.
3. The third type provides an appointment for the patrons through a courtesy lane by giving them falsified endorsement letters or authentic ones which they acquire with a fee. Montales said, “We’ve seen falsified endorsements and we’ve received information that applicants get authentic endorsements for a fee.”
4. The fourth type deceives the applicants by getting them schedule through the online appointment system but the slot would turn out to not reserved for the applicant.
Montales appealed to applicants not to patronize such schemes and hoped for the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) and Criminal Investigation and Detection Group (CIDG) Anti-Cybercrime Group to finish the investigation as soon as possible.
