{"id":20194,"date":"2026-05-11T04:32:14","date_gmt":"2026-05-11T04:32:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/20194\/"},"modified":"2026-05-11T04:32:14","modified_gmt":"2026-05-11T04:32:14","slug":"how-philippine-prison-kingpins-ran-japan-south-korea-crime-rings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/20194\/","title":{"rendered":"How Philippine prison kingpins ran Japan, South Korea crime rings"},"content":{"rendered":"

The prison cell, it turns out, is no obstacle to running a criminal empire. All you need is a smartphone, an encrypted messaging app and an overwhelmed corrections system, even if it is thousands of kilometres away.<\/p>\n

That was the conclusion law enforcement officials in South Korea<\/a> and Japan<\/a> reached after tracing a string of drug deals, home invasions and brazen robberies to inmates already serving time in the Philippines<\/a>.The cases exposed a darkly inventive new chapter in Southeast Asia<\/a>\u2019s troubling rise as a source of global cybercrime \u2013 one in which incarceration, for the resourceful criminal, has become little more than a minor administrative inconvenience.<\/p>\n

They involved some of Asia\u2019s most notorious criminals: from a South Korean murderer who has inspired gritty action fiction to a faceless syndicate linked to more than a dozen Japanese robberies and a murder.<\/p>\n

Armed with encrypted messaging apps like Telegram<\/a> and anonymous social media accounts, this new kind of tech-savvy criminal was able to rake in millions of US dollars from an ever-evolving series of illegal enterprises, even while behind bars.\"AA security officer looks on as newly released inmates exit New Bilibid Prison in Muntinlupa City, Metro Manila, the Philippines, on February 28, 2025. Photo: EPA-EFEDrug \u2018stock exchange\u2019<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The prison cell, it turns out, is no obstacle to running a criminal empire. All you need is…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":20195,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[15990,8,15987,27,15991,15988,23,15986,15984,657,5108,15989,4639,52,15985],"class_list":{"0":"post-20194","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-japan","8":"tag-cambodia","9":"tag-japan","10":"tag-luffy","11":"tag-manila","12":"tag-new-bilibid-prison","13":"tag-park-wang-yeol","14":"tag-philippines","15":"tag-raymond-narag","16":"tag-shigeru-yotoriyama","17":"tag-south-korea","18":"tag-southeast-asia","19":"tag-telegram","20":"tag-thailand","21":"tag-tokyo","22":"tag-toshiya-fujita"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20194","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20194"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20194\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20195"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20194"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20194"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20194"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}