Source: Beijing News
Each promoter has a computer and five or six mobile phones in front of him, playing roles such as "beauty" and "gambling shill".
Chinese employees work at least 12 hours a day. After get off work, they crowd into dormitories of 8 to 12 people to rest. These 8-person dormitories are dark rooms without windows.
Thousands of Chinese people are recruiting gamblers in China through part-time job recruitment, online earning, and pornographic live broadcasts in the Pearl Tower in the Philippines. Screenshot of the Beijing News reporter's secret visit video
A three-story-high wall, a barbed wire fence more than one meter high, and all entrances and exits are guarded by security guards with long and short guns... This building is called Pasay City in the south of Manila , the capital of the Philippines. The courtyard of the Pearl Building is brightly lit 24 hours a day and crowded with people. It is particularly conspicuous in the surrounding slums made of cement blocks and iron sheets, but the locals are used to it because the "Soler Oriental Group", which is composed of hundreds of online gambling companies, ", which is well-known locally.
Pearl Building is one of the main strongholds of Soler Oriental Group. Here, online gambling companies operate 24 hours a day. Thousands of Chinese people are attracted by high salaries. Their main jobs are through part-time recruitment, online earning and pornographic live broadcasts. This method attracts more Chinese people to gamble on gambling platforms, and there are several similar strongholds in the Philippines.
Recently, a Beijing News reporter recruited through a domestic intermediary company and successfully entered the Pearl Tower as a new employee undercover to get a glimpse of this online gambling group that "specializes in trapping Chinese people." Here, grassroots practitioners work at least 12 hours a day and only have one day off per month. If they fail to complete their tasks, fines, rotten eggs, and beatings are common. Because of the strict management, employees called Soler Oriental Group the "Oriental Prison". Many people want to flee back to their country, but their passports are being detained, thugs patrol the building, and security guards with guns guard the building outside, unless they pay a high severance package. Employees who cannot afford to pay severance pay and fines can only use their work to pay debts and continue to set up traps to defraud people.
The building is heavily guarded. Passport will be withheld before joining.
Manila International Airport About 10 minutes' drive west, on Quirino Street in Pasay City, there is a large slum made of cement blocks and iron sheets. When locals are bored, they lie on the sloping iron roof and bask in the sun, looking at the towering walls and barbed wire fences of the white building and the exotic faces outside the windows.
This white building is the Pearl Tower, which is brightly lit 24 hours a day and heavily guarded. In addition to high walls and barbed wire fences, the three entrances and exits of the front door, back door, and parking lot are guarded by armed security guards: the security guards at the front and back doors are equipped with pistols, and the security guards in the parking lot have shotguns slung on their chests.
Thousands of Chinese people are engaged in online gambling in this building. Monique, a Filipino who lives nearby, told reporters, "There are tens of thousands of Chinese working in online gaming companies nearby. At 12 o'clock in the evening, groups of Chinese will pour out of the office building and go to the streets to buy and eat."
7 In mid-month, the reporter and three other new employees who were attracted by the "high salary" set out from Beijing, took tourist visas and fake return itineraries, and pretended to be tourists to the Philippines. Domestic recruitment agencies tell everyone not to be nervous when going through customs and behave like tourists. The group first stopped in Hong Kong for a connecting flight and arrived in Manila 14 hours later.
At the agreed location at Manila Airport, a young man with a Hong Kong accent led everyone into a commercial vehicle. After driving for more than ten minutes, they stopped at the Pearl Tower. The man with a Hong Kong accent asked the reporter to get out of the car, and the other three Then he was pulled to the Soler Building, the headquarters of the Soler Eastern Group.
After entering the Pearl Building through a series of security checks, the administrative staff Lin Jun (pseudonym) asked for the reporter’s passport on the pretext of going through the entry formalities. After completing the procedures, the reporter wanted to ask for his passport back. Lin Jun said that employee passports are kept by the company. .
“Actually, we are detaining your passport to prevent you from escaping.” After joining the company, veteran employee Li Xiang (pseudonym) told reporters. If
employees want to resign, they can only get their passports back after paying the compensation company's agency, visa and other fees. "Some compensated for several thousand, and some compensated for 20,000 or 30,000," Li Xiang said. He wanted to leave when he first came here, but the compensation fee was too high and he had to continue working.
The company only has a number, and all employees use the nickname
. The front 5 floors of the Pearl Building are office buildings, and the back 7 floors are dormitory buildings. The office building has an L-shaped layout and is home to more than 50 online gaming companies, large and small. All companies have no names, only numbers.
The reporter was assigned to the company numbered "3B". Like many ordinary stores in China, red lanterns are hung at the entrance of the company, zodiac paintings of the Year of the Dog are pasted on the glass, and mythical beasts that bring wealth are placed at the front desk. Entering the door and bypassing the front desk, you will find the office lobby, which is like a large Internet cafe: eight rows of tables and chairs, with more than 100 promoters, most of them young men. The sound of typing on the keyboard and the sound of lottery bells intermingled in the room.
The labor contract shows that the name of the company numbered 3B is OG Group. In subsequent chats, many employees revealed to reporters that Pearl Building 3B is just an office location of OG Group. Its headquarters is in Solaire Building. It also has offices in another city in the Philippines and , Cambodia and . A financial staff member of
company told reporters that there are at least 8 markets for 3B alone. The larger markets include "Suncity" and "Dafa", etc., with monthly profits of tens of millions of yuan. The smaller markets have The monthly profit from the mouth is several million yuan.
Each handicap has different gameplay, including private lottery (illegal lottery with private dealers), gambling, and chess and card games such as baccarat. A manager said, "Each market has its own small boss, and there is a big boss behind it. More than 90% of the bosses and management here are from Fujian." The reporter also noticed that many managers speak Fujian dialect. comminicate.
The reporter was taken to see the supervisor of a handicap. "My name is ' pheasant '. People here don't use their real names. You can also give yourself a nickname." "Pheasant" looks to be in his 20s, has a Fujian accent, and manages the promotion business of "Yongcheng Lottery".
"Yongcheng Lottery" is a private lottery. The methods include Chongqing Shishi Lottery, Beijing PK10, Jiangsu Kuaisan, etc. Each period takes 5 to 10 minutes. Gambling is based on the results of domestic sports lottery and welfare lottery, and betting with regular lottery stations. The difference is that players’ gambling funds flow directly into the pockets of the “private bankers”.
"Yongcheng Lottery" also has its own private lottery. The lottery is broadcast live by a beautiful woman. It is similar to the fast three game. One period is 1 minute. The three dice in the glass cover jump. The point on the side that faces up when it stops is the lottery result. There are also 1-minute Lottery, PK10 and Mark Six Lottery.
When a player came into contact with this 1-minute lottery for the first time, he was deeply involved. "This kind of lottery is terrible. The more you lose, the more you want to bet. I always feel that I can win back the next one." This player has lost more than 20,000 yuan. He uninstalled the app several times, but couldn't help but reinstall it. "Staring at a mobile phone all day long, drawing, betting, and drawing prizes, it's too fast, there is no time to calm down, the whole person is sluggish, and it is not until all the money in the account is lost that I wake up a little." A member of
company The financial staff revealed, "It looks like there are losses and wins, but in fact the odds are calculated by the bookmaker. If you gamble for a long time, you will lose." The recharge and withdrawal of the
online gambling platform are all manually operated by the financial staff. The above-mentioned financial personnel said that they have hundreds of domestic personal bank cards for transfer, and the account opening banks are mostly small banks and rural credit cooperatives in various places.
reporters noticed that there are many recharge channels for online gambling, including WeChat wallet, Alipay , QQ wallet and bank card transfer. The recharged money can only be placed in bets and cannot be withdrawn. The platform stipulates that only the coding turnover reaches 1% of the recharge amount. times, you can withdraw cash. For example, if you recharge 10 yuan, you need to make a cumulative bet of 10 yuan before the balance can be withdrawn, and the only way to withdraw cash is to transfer to a bank card.
pretends to be a beautiful woman for promotion, bets on shills and performs to cooperate with
The little boss "Pheasant" has 10 promoters, all of whom are young men from Shandong, Sichuan, Fujian, Heilongjiang and other places in China. When
is working, there are five or six mobile phones lined up in front of each promoter. Each mobile phone has a note with a different identity: "Commissioner", "Male Gamer", "Female Gamer" to avoid chatting. Confused.
"Yongcheng Lottery" has more than a dozen QQ and WeChat player groups, with a total number of players exceeding 2,000. One of the promoter's jobs is to keep these players betting.
A series of electric bells rang in the office, which was the signal before the lottery was drawn. A string of numbers flashed rapidly on the screen, and when the frame was frozen, the number for the championship position came out as 7 again. The players in the group playing PK10 had lost four games in a row. "I just recharged and lost again." The players lamented and cursed.
Several promoters saw that the players were losing and no longer wanted to play, so they discussed implementing a "group speculation" to invigorate the atmosphere.
"Beauty Lulu " appeared in the group. Apparently she had become familiar with several male players before, and they were vying to call her "wife". "Lulu" didn't mind, and instead called a male player who had just lost money "husband". This aroused the jealousy of other male players, and they stopped discussing the loss for a while.
At this time, a "male player" who frequently placed tens of thousands of "big bets" appeared in the group, and other players called him "big brother" one after another. "Beauty" also said hello to "big brother", deliberately showing his unusual identity.
"Big Brother" posted a screenshot showing that he had won 19,600 yuan on a bet he just made. The group chat immediately became abuzz with players praising "Big Brother" for his courage and accurate vision. "Big Brother" replied humbly, "It's just luck." As if stimulated by "big brother", several "players" followed suit and started shouting: "Smash", "Stud", "You will hit the next move", "If you lose, start over again".
What the players don’t see is that the “beauty”, “big brother” and the “players” who follow the booing are all coordinated performances between several promoters, with the purpose of encouraging everyone to continue betting.
These "gambling shill" accounts have all the information, avatars, and photo albums, making it difficult to tell whether they are real or fake. This information was scraped from other people’s accounts. "Try to find someone who looks rich for a male account, and someone who is young and beautiful for a female account. Remember to block the other person after you're done, so they don't get discovered," said a promoter.
When players see screenshots of winning big prizes, promoters use trial accounts to simulate winning results, and then send the screenshots to gambling groups as players to stimulate real players.
The "beauties" continued to flirt with her in various ways, and the "gambling shills" offered the temptation of winning consecutive jackpots, and the players lost everything in a happy atmosphere.
Occasionally, a sober player questioned, "Why do I keep losing? It feels like you are all colluding to trick me." This player was immediately banned, and the message he sent was withdrawn by the administrator. The accounts and player groups of
promoters are often blocked due to suspicion of online gambling. They usually prepare multiple backup groups and transfer players in batches once the group is closed. There is also a Fujian man nicknamed "Mars" who is responsible for managing and unblocking promoters' accounts. He has hundreds of domestic real-name phone cards and corresponding ID numbers on hand to unblock or register new accounts.
bundles pornographic live broadcasts to recruit gambling and encourages players to develop offline
Another job of promoters is to recruit gambling in China through making friends, part-time recruitment, online earning projects, pornographic live broadcasts, etc., and even instigate and coax minors to participate in gambling , and also encourages players to develop offline and attract relatives and friends to participate in gambling.
"Brother, please register and recharge, and invite all your friends to come and play, so that I can get off work early in the evening and chat with you." A male promoter pretending to be a "beautiful girl" said to a middle-aged man through WeChat . Then he picked up another mobile phone and replied to a middle school student: "Brother, you must have fallen in love with me. Register and recharge, and I will help you make money together."
promoters pretend to be "beauties" who act coquettishly, act cute, tell dirty jokes, and try their best to "seduce" the other party into gambling. When I meet someone who wants to hear the voice of a "beautiful girl", I go to the few girls in the office and ask them to say something or sing a song.
When someone requests a video, promoters usually refuse because it is inconvenient to be in the office. The front-facing cameras of promoters' computers and mobile phones are sealed with stickers to prevent them from accidentally answering the other party's video chat and revealing their identity.
Part-time recruitment is a commonly used recruitment model. The company has dedicated personnel to publish part-time recruitment information on domestic recruitment websites in China, and then transfer the applicants to promoters."This is a job as a lottery merchandiser. You can do it at home using your mobile phone or computer. You can earn a stable salary of 300 yuan a day. No deposit or agency fees are required. It only requires 30 yuan in operating fees." The promoter said to the applicant.
"There are more students recruited for part-time jobs, and those who make money online are mainly office workers and mothers with children." said a promoter.
Some promoters sneak into online dating groups and pretend to be "beauties" to chat and make friends with male netizens. After they get to know each other well, they tell them that they have been playing lottery recently and can make steady money. Do you want to play together?
The biggest difference from the above three methods is that it is bundled with pornographic live broadcasts for gambling. Promoters not only have to pretend to be "beauties", but also use explicit vocabulary to chat with male netizens, send them nude photos and pornographic videos, and attract them to watch "their" pornographic live broadcast. The live broadcast of
is carried out on the online gambling platform. Several women conduct pornographic live broadcasts at fixed times every day. To watch the live broadcast, you need to register and recharge on the online gambling platform before you can obtain viewing rights. If you recharge more than 10,000 yuan, you can watch one-on-one pornographic live broadcasts. "Betting while watching the live broadcast is exciting and profitable," the promoter said to those watching the live broadcast.
"Yongcheng Lottery" has an agency system, which is similar to the multi-level distribution in MLM, with rebates at each level. The superior will rebate one thousandth of the total coding volume of the subordinate. The superior can also artificially set the odds of the subordinate agents and earn the difference in odds. A promoter is a first-level agent, and if the players he recruits develop other players, they will be second-level agents.
promoters encourage players to invite their relatives and friends to participate in gambling and "turn your connections into money." There was a young male player who attracted 11 of his relatives and friends to participate in online gambling in one day.
"As long as you have tasted the sweetness of online gambling, you will become addicted to it," said a promoter. "If you play for a long time, you will definitely lose." He has seen players become so anxious about losing that they threaten to jump off the building and call the police. , and those who knelt down and begged, he directly blocked them.
reporters noticed that among the players of "Yongcheng Lottery", there are students, mothers, office workers, and retired elderly people. The youngest is only 15 years old and the oldest is in his 60s.
Frequently fines tens of thousands, and employees say they have been sent to the "Oriental Prison"
The Chinese people engaged in online gambling in Pearl Tower come from all over the country, and they have worked in all walks of life before. The reporter met the youngest, who had just turned 18. He had not graduated from technical secondary school for two years. He was introduced by relatives and friends and said, "I miss home."
No matter what position they are in, Chinese employees work at least 12 hours a day. Employees are required to work overtime up to 14 hours. New employees will not have any holidays in the first month, and old employees will have one or two days off per month. If they do not complete the tasks in the current month, the rest for the next month will be cancelled.
company has strict management and prevention of employees: in the office, employees' personal mobile phones are handed in and can be collected after get off work. Each employee has a camera above his head, and managers patrol the office from time to time to conduct surprise inspections of employees' work. Cell phones and computers. There are security guards patrolling the corridors, corners, and stairwells of the building, and employees may be interrogated at any time. Except for the toilets, there are cameras everywhere in the building.
Chinese employees directly refer to Soler Oriental Group as the "Oriental Prison". Here, every rule is linked to money. Failure to wear a work badge will result in a fine of 5,000 pesos (approximately RMB 643). Smoking outside the smoking area will result in a fine of 5,000 pesos. Taking photos in any area of the building will result in a fine of 100,000 pesos (approximately RMB 643). (totaling RMB 12,860), a private mobile phone connected to the office WiFi, and direct dismissal, which also means a severance compensation.
"Your mobile phones are all brought from China and may be monitored. You are not allowed to connect to the office wifi. If you are found, you will be fired," "Pheasant" said to the newcomers.
There are stipulated times for eating and using the toilet. Meal time should not exceed half an hour, and smoking and toilet time should not exceed 10 minutes at a time. If the time is exceeded, wages will be deducted. "I haven't saved any money after working for half a year, and I was almost fined." An employee said that the gaming company has strict management, mainly to prevent employees from leaking secrets and attracting police crackdowns.
reporters inquired about public reports. In recent years, the Chinese police and the Philippine police have jointly cracked down on transnational online gambling cases on many occasions, destroying multiple online gambling platforms and organizations. The amount involved amounted to billions of yuan, and hundreds of Chinese practitioners were arrested. Escorted back to the country for trial.
Founder of the Asia Responsible Gambling Alliance Su Guojing said that the Philippines is the online gambling distribution center in Asia and even the world. A large number of online gambling companies and servers in Asia are located in the Philippines. "This is related to local regulatory policies. The Philippine government has issued many online gambling licenses. Many Chinese are engaged in online gambling in the Philippines, and no one understands their number and scale. There are Chinese, Filipino, American, and British Chinese. "Su Guojing said that the handicaps opened by the Chinese are basically aimed at gambling from mainland China and ethnic Chinese. In the past two years, many people from Fujian, Guangdong and Guangxi, as well as junk operators who used to be in Macau, have gone to the Philippines to engage in online gambling. Some people who were originally engaged in underground Mark Six lottery and private casinos went to the Philippines to engage in online gambling.
html July is the rainy season in Manila, with continuous rain, sultry heat and humidity, and sometimes there is no sunshine for several days in a row. Due to the chaotic security situation in the surrounding area, Chinese people engaged in the gambling industry are often targeted for robbery, so no one dares to hang out alone. After get off work, Chinese employees crowd into dormitories of 8 to 12 people, and drinking is almost their only pastime.A promoter of "Yongcheng Lottery" told reporters that his daily work was unethical and violated the law. He wanted to leave on the first day he came here, but he couldn't afford the severance pay, so he had no choice but to continue. "I can't tell the difference between day and night. I'm a man, but I dress up as a woman to seduce men all day long. I feel like I'm about to have a split personality."
html On July 21, a Chinese employee contacted the agency that recruited him in China. The company said that he could no longer stay and wanted to return to China. The agency told him that he needed to be compensated a total of 30,000 yuan for air tickets, visa fees and agency fees: "Either keep doing it or pay. If you don't pay enough, you won't be able to come back."Beijing News Investigation Team
