Clandestine hospitals in the Philippines have been offering plastic surgery services to fugitives and scam centre workers to help them evade arrest, a

The secret hospitals offering criminals new faces

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2024-07-09 11:30:03

Clandestine hospitals in the Philippines have been offering plastic surgery services to fugitives and scam centre workers to help them evade arrest, authorities say.

Two such illegal hospitals could be shut down "in the coming weeks" after police raided the first one in Manila's southern suburbs in May, a police spokesman told the BBC.

Hair transplant tools, dental implants and skin whitening IV drips were seized from the hospital in Pasay City two months ago.

"You can create an entirely new person out of those," said Winston John Casio, a spokesman for the Presidential Anti-Organised Crime Commission (PAOCC).

The online casinos or Pogos (Philippine Online Gaming Operations) cater to players in mainland China, where gambling is illegal.

Three doctors - two from Vietnam and one from China - a Chinese pharmacist, and a Vietnamese nurse were arrested in the Pasay raid, none of whom were licensed to work in the Philippines.