Drug dealers hunt for mules in social networking sites—PDEA chief

NORZAGARAY, Bulacan, Philippines—The chief of the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA) has warned Filipino women anew to be wary of using social networking sites to find partners or spouses because they might fall prey to  international drug syndicates looking for couriers of illegal drugs.

“Pinay or Filipino couriers abroad are not usually overseas Filipino workers but tourists. A foreign member of a drug syndicate would befriend, through Facebook, a Filipina and then court her. When the Filipina becomes his girlfriend, the foreigner would ask her to go abroad as tourist and that’s when the woman becomes a drug mule,” Jose Gutierrez Jr., PDEA director general, told the Inquirer.

Gutierrez was here on Friday to oversee the destruction of two tons of illegal drugs and paraphernalia that were used as evidence to prosecute suspected drug dealers in court.

Judges ordered these materials destroyed so PDEA donated them as alternative fuel for the cement plant here of Holcim Philippines.

Gutierrez said members of drug syndicates scour social networking sites so they can choose women to court. Once women agree to a romantic relationship, the syndicates offer them opportunities to travel or to get jobs in other countries.

The syndicates send Filipino agents to help these women get  tourist visas, he said.

Gutierrez said PDEA’s information showed that most syndicate members who lure Filipino women online are Africans.

Because of their relationship, some of their girlfriends soon participate willingly as couriers out of love or loyalty, he said.

“The Filipino women who become the girlfriends of those foreigners will do anything they ask because of love, even if it required them to sell illegal narcotics,” he said.

PDEA has been monitoring depots and all shipping and airline entry points, after learning that illegal narcotics have slipped into the country as prescription drugs, he said.

He said a raid on a Mandaluyong City drugstore, purposely to crack down on synthetic drugs being sold over the counter, led them to anti-allergy tablets that turned out to be shabu (methamphetamine hydrochloride).

Gutierrez said tablets containing shabu are in great demand among call center agents to keep them awake in the graveyard shift.

“We are still having these [tablets] checked by the laboratory, but our initial effort to determine their contents proved these contain shabu chemicals,” he said.

Shabu remains the most expensive illegal street drug in the country because a gram could cost as much as P10,000, Gutierrez said.

He said marijuana remains the second top selling illegal drug in the country, followed by the synthetic drug Ecstasy.