Israeli man wanted in Germany for fraud held in Philippines

An Israeli man facing a string of fraud charges in Germany has been arrested in the Philippines after being on the run for more than a year, the Bureau of Immigration said Tuesday, reported dpa.

The 43-year-old suspect was apprehended last Friday in the Manla suburban city of Pasay following a two-week manhunt after German authorities sent information about the charges against him, said Immigration Commissioner Jaime Morente.

“Now that we have him in custody, we will proceed with the deportation proceedings so he may be deported and blacklisted from the country for being an undesirable alien,” Morente said.

According to German authorities, the Israeli man allegedly defrauded about 200 victims in an investment scam worth more than 6.4 million euros between 2016 and 2019.

He was part of a syndicate that operated an online trading platform and persuaded victims through emails and telephone calls to invest large sums of money with a promise of high profits.

Two arrest warrants were issued by German courts in Bavaria against the suspect in February 2020, the immigration bureau said.

The suspect arrived in Manila as a tourist in January 2020, before the country went into lockdown due to the coronavirus pandemic, and was not an overstaying foreigner with an expired tourist visa.