Philippines Scams & Warnings

Continued on from the Home Page:

In case of couples or (triples, and, sometimes, even quadruples) whether hetero- or otherwise, a customer can request various sexual acts to be performed on cam, and most such requests will probably be granted. According to what such online Asian sex models told me, I have gathered that most typical customers will spend from two to ten minutes watching ” the show” while simultaneously chatting with them.
There are now quite a few such sites, and they can be found by using the following search words: ” Webcam, Sex, Asian, Models, Cams, Girls, Babes”. On some mirror sites, or sites advertising the services, you might even see convoluted Chinese characters probably meant to make you feel like you are penetrating some unknown mysterious country where people speak a strange Oriental language.
I have been researching these sites for months, and here are some of my discoveries:
Most, if not all, such “models” are in the Philippines, a former US Commonwealth, and not in China, Japan, Thailand or other such “exotic” places as some referral pages seem to imply. There are now thousands of such Filipinas ready to chat with you for a relatively small per-minute charge. Filipino people are English-speaking, which makes employing them easier than employing a Thai or a Chinese person to do a similar job. Even uneducated people there can speak rudimentary English, and most can carry on conversations that are necessary for such online activities.
To all intents and purposes, most such shows are, basically, online stripping and sexy talk. On some sites, one can buy things for the models-top up their phone cards, purchase them drinks and food, and even help hen acquire a cell phone.
Being a single guy, I felt intrigued, and decided to go in and talk with the girls. Since I have lived in the Philippines before, I can speak and write Tagalog (the main Philippine language) fairy well, so I tried some free chat in their language. So, here is my little report:
Most such cam models are predictably poor, not well (or not yet) educated, and/or students who need money for tuition (there is no student loan program in the Philippines, and scholarships and grants are extremely hard to obtain). There are also people there whose parents did not have money to help them finish high school (yup, in the Philippines, parents must have money if they want their kids to finish it) These high school dropouts now face bleak job prospects- how does $24-75 a month sound to you? – and that is all most people without such a diploma can hope to make working a regular job in the Philippines.
There are also young ladies with children there (or who are about to have children) who have been abandoned by their husbands and boyfriends, and there are even those who are married. Some spouses probably allow them to “perform” or even encourage them to do so to put some food on the family table. There are also those who hope to catch a foreign hubby, or just a friend who would take care of them and help them out.
There are, likewise, scammers who prey on lonely foreign chatters, and who accumulate cyber admirers to send them money for imaginary schools fees, hospital bills, funerals of relatives who are alive and well, and other such made-up reasons. Some are there because they do not have the money to apply for a regular job- in the Philippines, you see, in order to get a job, several clearances from the police, hospitals, local neighborhood councils and even the National Bureau of Investigations are required. Employers in that country must make sure that one has no criminal record, is healthy and eligible for work- and such documents cost money. No clearances (commonly called “requirements” )- means no job. So, the girls undress on cams to earn money to get those requirements- or to meet someone who would be willing to pay for them.
In contrast to the West, a good number of strippers claim to be virgins and have never had a boyfriend before, and I believe them- the Philippines is a Catholic country, and virginity is still greatly valued by society there. Online sexy chat for them is just a job, separate from real life. Obviously, those whose job is to perform coitus with a “coworker” are not virgins.
There are even those who did not initially think that they were going to be doing that kind of work, but who were lured into it by trickery, but I will talk about those later.
Basically, the Philippine webcam strippers and sex act performers get paid some $0.25- a quarter -a minute. For a ten minute performance, they get $2.50, sometimes more, depending on the site. Some work on several different sites simultaneously. The goal is to accumulate as many minutes of “privates” as possible. They usually work in so-called “studios” located in residential houses with many rooms, or one large room with curtain partitions. They sit in front of computers waiting for customers some 8 -10 hours a day.
The work, according to many of the girls, beats prostitution, in particular, if you are only a stripper, and your viewers are in foreign lands, thousands of miles away. No one can physically touch you from such long distances, and you will not catch a disease or be abused by a `john’. From a purely American perspective, and on surface, there is no violation of any law taking place. However, as I dug deeper and deeper into the “industry”, I began seeing some things that were not making me happy at all.
Again, since I can speak the language of the Philippines, I would talk to the girls in the free chat zone and try and get their cell phone number or a Yahoo ID. If the performer would not give it to me in the free chat section, I would “go private” and ask her for it again. Then, they would usually give me both, as most Filipinas have both. I would then chat with them on Yahoo and call and text them. So, what did I learn? Well, apparently, alongside the rather harmless aspect of the “business” such as stripping-for- pay there were some not so pleasant facts about it, namely:
This work is illegal where they are. Running a “studio” like that is a crime in that country. In the Philippines, actually, these studios are referred to as “Cyber Sex Dens”.
Go ahead, and put the following key words into your favorite search engine: “Cyber Sex Den, Arrest, Raid, Philippines” . Quite a few articles from Philippine newspapers will come up which will describe how the police routinely raid such establishments and arrest the owners and the `performers’ . And, invariably, according to the newspapers there are almost always some minors that work in such cyber sex dens- just read the articles.
Also, if you watch the Philippine TV, you will see that, almost weekly, they also show how a new police raid on yet another cyber sex den is carried out with numerous arrests being made and charges filed.
The Philippine public is routinely asked by authorities to help the cops by reporting suspicious activities such as large groups of girls with heavy make-up, coming in and out of private residences. The most common charge in case of an arrest seems to be “human trafficking” , although a bill was proposed in 2007 by the Philippine government (not sure if it has become a law yet) to punish lewd online behavior with up to a $24,000 fine, and up to five years in jail.
Either way you look at it, absolutely all the people working in such “businesses” are doing so secretly and well, illegally. Unlike in the case of bargirls and karaoke girls who are registered as “entertainers” and are legal, all of the online webcam girls doing “cyber sex” are involved in an unlawful business (according to the laws of their country).
Some girls that chatted with me would tell me that they stay indoors most of the time after work in the same house where they strip and are afraid, or strongly discouraged by their “bosses”, to go outside so as not to arouse suspicions from neighbors. In other words, many are under a lockdown, as it were.
When I was in the Philippines this Spring, I tried to have an appointment with one “webcam girl” only to be told by her that her boss does not allow her out of the house. She can only leave once a week to visit her family and give them the money. Some girls, though, told me that they could come and go at will. So, I guess, it depends on where the “studio” is located and what relationship it has with the local authorities if you know what I mean. Some girls have told me that the bosses had made “arrangements” with the police to be left alone.
Are there minors in the business as some newspaper articles claim? Apparently so. Some models look really young. Are they all really eighteen and up? According to the Stateside- based sites, yes, they are. All the adult sites on US servers have to display a notice stating that they comply with U.S.C. TITLE 18, SECTION 2257, a US law/regulation requiring that all such models be at least 18 years old or above. The sites that deal with online Asian models have the same notice in full view.

If the performers are younger than that, they are minors and cannot be shown naked, or engaging in sex acts. If they are, it is called…. well, you know what it is called.

How do they make sure that the girls are eighteen and up? Well, in order for sites located in the US to hire such models, usually two IDs are required, and a contract where the person states that she (or he) is at least 18 years old. In my chats, and then, personal meeting with such “cam girls” at various Manila restaurants last spring, quite a few have told me that they were not yet 18, or were 18 now, but had not been 18 at the time they began working. If that is true, then some of our American- based websites are showing minors in indecent roles knowingly or unknowingly.

I would recoil in horror after hearing that the girls could have been minors-” but you are required to send two IDs, stating you are an adult, don’t you?”. “Oh, no problem”, the girl would say, “I simply sent in my sister’s IDs. They are not so strict about IDs where I work”. I would immediately pay the bill and bolt out of the restaurant outraged. How can this be happening?!

I guess, since all Asians look the same to many Americans, these “sister’s IDs” might go through unnoticed quite often.

Another girl told me while I met her and her other online coworkers at a Pizza Hut that she had been under-aged when she applied to work for a cyber sex studio, and this is how she solved the problem: She went to Quiapo, an area in Manila where all kinds of false IDs are easily obtainable, and bought her fake ones there. Yet another told me on Yahoo Messenger how her “boss” got all the fake cards for her. In the very corrupt country of the Philippines, a fake identification, or any other document, is readily available for a reasonable price in Quiapo. People even go there to get counterfeit high school diplomas, and getting them seems to be a very quick and easy process.

I would think that for US authorities to prove that a scanned copy of an ID issued in a country half way around the world is fake, or does not even belong to the person whom it is supposed to represent is probably not easy. At least not as easy as for those girls to get those fake IDs and palm them off as being authentic ones.

Every time I surfed those sites, and subsequently chatted with the girls on Yahoo Messenger, I would invariably run into someone who would tell me in Tagalog that they were not yet of age, and were working there under an assumed name or with an ID of a friend /relative because they needed the money. If what these girls told me in confidence, in their language, is true, then these sites are working with studios that purposely or not misrepresent minors as adults. You could be watching illegal p0rn and not even know it. Scary, indeed.

Cyber sex slavery? Some girls have told me scary things, and if these are for real, then we should all be up in arms. They have related to me how they were tricked into such work by being invited from distant rural provinces to large cities with promises of `employment at internet cafes’. Upon arrival, they were allegedly strong-armed into “working the cams”- stripping and/or performing sex acts with “co-workers” . One girl told me that her own aunt invited her to come and “watch a computer” at her apartment in Manila, and immediately put her in front of it to strip.

I talked with some more girls, and they have told me that quite a few similar cases have been reported in the press. There have been allegations of young women, even minors, forced to undress, dance naked and have sex in front of the worldwide internet audience, and that they have been threatened and even beaten to make them perform.

If that is true even with a few girls, how many of them are now working on the sites which are legally operating in our country, protected by the First Amendment under the proud sign that all models are 18 and up? Who knows? Naïve country girls tricked into prostitution is a common thing in Asia, so, girls who are tricked into the cyber variety of it must also exist. Which one of those you see in the thumbnails can be such an abused girl forced to strip or have sex in front of you against her will?

When I tried to bring up such issues with the US based site owners and operators, my IP was immediately banned and I was kicked out. Needless to say, the money that I paid into my credit account was not reimbursed. Are they hiding something?
Having said all of the above, the majority of the girls are probably sitting in their cyber windows voluntarily, and are there to make some money for whatever needs they may have. Usually, it is to help their families in the rural provinces where money is scarce. So, girls undress and, sometimes, have sex in front of you so that they could send some cash to their mothers and send their brothers to school.
How much do they make? I asked them. Some successful ones can make up to $600-900 a month which is very big money in the Philippines. Some barely make $40 a month. Most of them probably make somewhere around $80-150 a month. This is why many of them are looking for someone to help them out with extra cash.
Because there are all kinds of people there, there are also several categories of girls (and some other sexes) that look for your extra help outside of what they earn by stripping and otherwise, honestly and dishonestly.
1) Scammers. These I would say are some 10-15% of the workers. They are often angelic-looking creatures with sweet childish smiles that have three or four guys taking them “private” regularly, and some actively courting them and sending them cash for p0rn shows on Yahoo Messenger or without any reason at all. These, however, will not reveal to you that they have other “supporters” , and will come up with all sorts of sob stories to make you part with your cash. Some girls will tell you that their relatives have died and you will be asked to help with the funeral because no one in the family has the money to bury the father (who is alive and well and is waiting for the cash for his “funeral”. Some will ask you for tuition so that they could finish a nursing school (that they are not attending, and never have), some will ask you for money to replace a lost cell phone (which they did not lose). One girl posing to be a nursing student asked me for money to
fly to Singapore for OJT. Of course, there was no OJT to speak of. After she had left on her supposed OJT, she texted me before she was getting on the plane. I then called her “on the plane” in one hour and she answered. Not being very aware of how long it takes to fly from Manila to Singapore (3 hours) she had told me that she was already in Singapore. I asked her what part of Singapore she was in, and she was at loss for an answer. There goes your money!

So, these scammers eventually reveal their lying side to you because good liars need to have good memory and know a lot of things, and these often do not, and their stories change as time goes by. When you catch them at it, it is a big shock for them, and a big disappointment for you, of course. Ouch, and all that money you’ve lost!

There are also those who will complain to you about how much they hate to be there and do what they do, and how they want you to get them out of there because they have no bus fair to leave and go back home to their province. After you send them the money, they will thank you and continue sitting right where they had been sitting, and undressing in front of more guys telling the new suckers how much they hate their jobs as online strippers so that these guys, too could send them more cash and so ad infinitum.

Some of their computers have Western Union and Xoom ( http://www.xoom. com) icons on their monitors to check if your hard-earned cash is ready for a pick up. Some Cyber Sex dens have the policy that 10% of all remittances must go to the “house”- their Cyber Madame, Cyber Pimp and Cyber Transvestite and the rest of the crew.

Trying to evoke your pity (and your money) is the most common strategy of all these people, followed by confessions of love to you and how they will wait for you (and a few other guys) when you go to the Philippines to visit them. Plaintive confessions of love and descriptions of your subsequent future marriage and kids are a nice icing on the cake to make you part with even more of your cash several more times before you finally wake up and stop being taken for a fool yet again.

2) The not very bright ones. Some 85%. Let’s face it: it is quite rare that a Mensa member in any nation would be sitting in a cyber window ready to flash a pair of breasts at foreign men for 25 cents a minute. It is not just poverty that draws young women to this kind of work but also, shall I say, lack of sufficient intelligence? Naivite? Lack of life experience and the inability to make proper choices? I don’t know what to call it without offending people. These are not your Harvard scholars, to put it subtly. Their IQ is probably not very high. They look cute and are friendly and sexy and young and attractive, but how about some brains? How about their personal dignity as a woman? Pride. Things like that. Most probably, those are not some of their strongest points. Since many did not finish high school, they cannot really get a better job. At least, here, all they have to do is, mainly, undress and walk around the room naked and talk dirty to you.
The rest of the day, they just sit and monitor the computer screen and chat for free with members and guests hoping to entice them into giving them more “privates” because most girls have quotas that their bosses ask them to fulfill and if they don’t, they don’t get paid.
Out in the real world, they would have to be working 10 hours a day in some small shops sorting packs of clothes, or in some factory at a conveyer belt assembling toys or electronics for the same wage or less. A back breaking, thankless job, with no opportunity to meet exotic foreign men. So, I guess, erotic chat seems like a lesser evil to them.
Can we help them?
If you decide to help such people, which some guys try to do, you will have to be prepared to witness a great deal of very unwise behavior on their part particularly in the way they handle your hard earned remittances . If you send them money, some will just blow it on nonsense things or send most of it to their poor family in the province. Then, they will ask you for even more money. And, if you send them more money, they will blow it again and ask for even more money.
They will usually stop asking only when you stop sending, and after calling you a few names that would make a stoker blush, and threatening you with all manners of things, mostly that they will become hookers and kill themselves and all that.
As you would expect with many young people in their late teens or early twenties and who are poor high school drop outs, lying to survive is a daily routine, and they will lie to you about many things or hide many things from you. One girl whom I tried to help asked me for some small money so that she could get all the required clearances for her job. What she did not tell me was that it included getting a fake high school degree which was eventually discovered after she had gotten her job, and she was fired on the spot.
One girl asked me for money so that she could get enrolled at a call center for training to be a customer service rep. She assured me that after the training period, she would have a job. What she did not tell me was that the job was conditional on whether or not she would pass an appropriate exam upon the completion of the training course. The girl did, in fact , enroll- I did call the office- but she failed the exam that I paid for. Her English language skills were not that great, and she did not understand the lectures that well. My money went out the window. Now, what will I do? Send her more money to take another course and take more exams? Pay her rent while she is, again, studying? I decided not to. I just do not have the budget for such things.
One asked me for a relatively small amount of money to start a micro restaurant business which, subsequently, failed, and she came asking for more. Nope! No more.
Some girls will simply act in very irresponsible ways if you try to work with them on improving their lot in life. You will ask to chat with them on YM and they will stand you up or show up hours late. You will ask them to send you information and they will not reply. You will send them a 150 peso cell phone load so that they could stay in touch with you, and they will text you for 2 pesos and spend the remaining 148 pesos on nonsense calls and texts to their family and friends, and then ask you to load their phone again and again and again.
Do they understand the value of money? Do they know anything about budgeting? I don’t think so. Was I like that at the age of 18-22? Did I lie and act in irresponsible ways? Did I come late to appointments or stand people up? You bet I did. And I was not a high school dropout even, just plain immature and irresponsible, driving people older than me nuts.
And don’t forget things like laziness, laxity, procrastination and lack of common sense and problem solving skills. These will exhibit all of those. Changing those people and “training” them will be devilishly hard.
So, if you have money to burn, and wish to educate people who are still not very wise, and give them more and more chances month after month, then go ahead and help them. Also, if you can afford to whisk the girl away from the cam and to your country or go to the Philippines to live and monitor and babysit her, go ahead. All the rest -be careful.
Alas, they say that God gave men two heads, but only enough blood for one of them. So, it looks like no matter what I say, both the scammer girls, and the sincere but not very bright girls will be reducing the financial holdings of the lonely, horny and love-starved Western guys for a long time to come.

3) The semi- intelligent, almost responsible and not so bad people- some 5%. For whatever wacky reason imaginable, sometimes, fairly decent people get caught in the Cyber Sex vortex and appear on the stripper’s cam. Some are, actually, college students that cannot pay their tuition. Some, in fact, are just there to chat, and possibly find a boyfriend. The virgins among them feel very reluctant to do what they are doing. If you want to help these people, your money will not be wasted as much. Yes, they will still make mistakes, but they will not blow your cash as recklessly as the abovementioned two other categories would. They will also lie and conceal significantly less than the other two types. The problem is isolating them from the scammers and the not so bright ones. That is a difficult task, but is doable nonetheless, if you are really devoted to carrying out such an altruistic and difficult task or are deeply in love with the girl.

If you have some money you can spare, send them a little bit, but ask them for scanned documentary proof of everything. If they claim to be attending a nursing school, ask them to scan and send you their ID. If they say that they had been robbed, ask for a copy of a police report. If they tell you that they are in debt to a local Indian loan shark (commonly referred to in the Philippines as “Five-Six”), ask to see a scanned copy of receipts or ledgers. If they tell you they cannot obtain them ask for any other proof but do not take their word for it. The burden of proof is on them. Most honest girls will be able to obtain some kind of receipt for you. Then, you will have to have very long chat sessions with the girl on Yahoo Messenger to explain how and in what way you will help her and ask her to agree to your conditions.

My personal recommendation, though is this- unless you are a born philanthropist or have money that you can afford to lose, or are seriously and head over heels enamored with the young lady stripper and are contemplating a very long affair possibly culminating in marriage, and you can afford it, harden your heart, as, in all cases, you will end up spending more money than you initially planned.

On the other hand, if you can muster the willpower and the wisdom not fall in love from all those Asian webcam models and fall for their siren call, and want to meet a decent Filipina without such a strange chapter in her life, the one who did not spend several months getting nude in front of horny foreigners online, stick with http://filipinofrie ndfinder. com or http://asianfriendf inder.com, orhttp://www.doulike. com. Even http://www.friendst er.com will yield surprisingly good results if you surf long enough and send enough messages to girls. You will find plenty of “normal” people there. Sure enough, they will not be calling you “baby” or “honey” outright, and ask you if you want to see their hot bodies in the first five minutes of your being acquainted with them, but they will also not break your heart as often, lie like rugs or, worse, send you to the poor house.

In conclusion, such Asian Cyber Sex/ Cyber Stripper sites should be for entertainment only, but as anything else, they are a can of worms and should be approached with caution. If you try and get involved with anyone on those sites beyond that, they can be a minefield and you can get hurt of you are not careful. Also, keep in mind that you are supporting an industry that is illegal where it comes from, even though it is legal in the US. And, as gambling is now declared to be an addiction and even a disease that can cause people to lose a lot of their money and destroy fortunes, online Asian cyber sex and strip sites can have a similar effect on you and your money if you do not know where and how to stop.
If you are just a fun loving guy who does not take such girls seriously, who does not mind spending his ten bucks to see some female Asian anatomy, and who does not want to take things further, then go ahead and surf those sites. But watch out if the girls look very young. They may, in fact, be too young to be viewed no matter what the disclaimer says.
However, if you are somewhat weak and lonely and easily fall for sweet talk or, if you have something called a “heart”, and compassion, concern and care for other human beings, you may end up spending quite a bit of money on those sites with a lot of it going to waste. You may also wind up hurt in more ways than one. You will be surprised how many very practical, reasonable and careful, mature guys can become completely hypnotized by the sweet smile of a distant Asian stripper only to lose their shirt and have their heart broken into smithereens as a result.
Caveat emptor!