Andrew Robson, Graham Allan Bennet and Dominic Whellams were arrested in the Cavite region by agents of the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI).
The trio are charged with running a boiler room scam via their company Plustel Solution. The scam involved calling unsuspecting investors outside of the Philippines and using high-pressure sales tactics to sell “worthless, overpriced, and non-existent securities to investors”, according to a statement issued by the Philippines Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
The NBI said prospective investors were usually chosen from engineering, oil and gas, and manufacturing industries.
The SEC said the suspects were “not authorised to sell” any investment products as Plustel has not registered with the regulator any securities products, including equity and debt securities, mutual funds or exchange-traded funds.
“In addition, Plustel is not licensed as a securities broker, dealer, investment adviser or investment house,” it said.
“The moment they called them, and these possible victims show interest, there is already a pressured selling, telling them about good news of the shares that are not of value actually,” said Jose Aquino, director of SEC’s enforcement and investor protection department.
Robson denied the allegations, insisting that he was only working as a consultant at Plustel.
“Our product is a DID (Direct Inward Dialing) for insurance companies, for money transfer companies, anything like that. We do not deal with securities; we do not deal with anything like that whatsoever. All the allegations are false,” he told local media.
