Muling activities—or the use of stolen legitimate accounts sold to criminal organizations—may finally come to an end with the establishment of the private sector-led Fraud Bureau, which will support the implementation of the Anti-Financial Account Scamming Act (AFASA Law or Republic Act No. 12010), spearheaded by the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP).
Lito Villanueva, president of Fintech Alliance PH, said during a panel discussion on “Innovation Flywheel: Scaling Local Enterprises for Global Impact” at the 51st Philippine Business Conference (PBC) on Tuesday, Oct. 21, that the industry-led Fraud Bureau participants will begin contributing fraud data to help address and prevent mule accounts.
“Part of that is also having to come up with solutions or interventions that would further support the AFASA law,” he said.
The Alliance, he added, is ensuring that all participants will be engaged in this initiative.
The Fraud Bureau will support the AFASA law, which requires all banks and BSP-supervised financial institutions (BSFIs) to have fraud management and anti-money laundering platforms in place by June next year.
“There are a lot of mule accounts nowadays,” said Villanueva.
Some of these, he noted, involve Filipinos who sell their identities or accounts to criminal organizations by:
“misrepresent[ing] themselves as if they are the real owners of those accounts. But the account is legit and yet being used by somebody else.”
The group has also submitted its white paper to Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) Secretary Henry Aguda and the Cybercrime Investigation and Coordination Center, outlining a roadmap for the proposed Fraud Bureau in the Philippines. The initiative is positioned as a shared responsibility across the country’s digital ecosystem.
Aside from the BSP, the Alliance is also working with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
“This is just an intervention by the industry and [meant to] help the AFASA move forward,” said Villanueva.
The AFASA law aims to penalize financial scams such as phishing, vishing, and money muling. Key provisions include:
- Imposing stricter penalties for financial crimes,
- Establishing responsibilities for financial institutions to implement stronger security measures and fraud management systems, and
- Granting the BSP the authority to investigate financial accounts without a court order in certain cases.
