John Jonas explains why Filipino offshore workers rarely steal digital assets: they fear job loss, stolen data has little resale value, and the Philippines has steep cybercrime penalties and cultural stigma against theft. He describes a $600 AdWords theft case and outlines reporting options including the National Bureau of Investigation Cybercrime Division.
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Welcome to the Secret Sauce of Outsourcing podcast that's dedicated to making you better at outsourcing to the Philippines. This is episode 257, why digital theft is so uncommon in the Philippines. So people always ask me, how can I trust this person? Their minds always go to like, what if my OFS steals from me? Or what if they steal my sensitive client information or they steal my website or they steal my domain or they steal my idea or they mess up my whole web hosting or something like that, right? And the thought is, what can I do to prevent this? Or what do I do if it happens? And I'll just say, the good thing is this rarely, rarely happens. Now, it did happen. In fact, just last week, I saw it happen for the first time in like a couple years. I've had someone report this to me. They had someone managing their AdWords account, and that person spent, I think, $600 on Google Ads for their own stuff in this employer's account. Super duper crappy. Now Google will give you your money back. And American Express was also giving his money back. So, like, he was out little other than just a hassle of dealing with this, which super, super rare. But the reason this is rare. Let me give you three reasons why it's rare. Number one, typically they don't want to steal from you once they have a job. They really just want to keep that job. It's hard to find a job in the Philippines. And if they steal from you, they know they just lost their job. So that person, like, he immediately lost his job and he's now worried that he's going to be prosecuted by the police, which is very possible. He has to go find another job. He's not going to get paid for the time he spent. It's a problem for him. Right? Number two, there's just not a lot of incentive to steal sensitive things like steal your hosting account. There's just not a lot of incentive for that. There's not a lot of incentive to steal sensitive client information. I asked my team about this and they were like, there's not, like, somewhere for me to sell that information. Why do I want to steal that? That would be. It's just a waste of time. And then the last thing, the third thing is, look, the digital punishment is really, really steep here. The Philippines government takes theft really seriously. In fact, my son, who's in the Philippines as a missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints has told me they don't. They don't lock their stuff outside Their place. Nobody's stealing where they are. Because if someone steals, like if you go into a store and steal there and they find out who it was, which is not uncommon because in a barangay where everybody, which is like a neighborhood, everybody knows everybody, you steal something, well, that store is going to put your picture up on the wall forever and say, this person's a thief. And you will be permanently branded in the community as a thief. And this is real because communities are small there where you go to the local market that's a block away from you every day. And everybody knows everybody who goes there. It's not like here in the US where we drive 10 minutes to go to the grocery store, we don't see anybody, we know who's there. And if you go back, if you've stolen something, they put your picture up. Well, nobody knows you, nobody recognizes you. So that's not how it is in the US but in the Philippines, it's a different story. So in communities, theft in the Philippines is really, really looked down upon. It's a really big deal. Next, the government has very strict punishment laws for theft. And then the government's really on board with digital work. And so they have made digital theft penalties twice what normal penalties are. So it's a really big problem for you if you're caught doing that, because the punishment is double what it would be if you had stole something in person. So then we wanted to know, what do I do if it does happen? What are my options? So my team took it upon themselves to research this. They sent an email to the Department of Justice and the Philippines and let me just read you the email that they sent. Because many employers are concerned about the safety of their data. They are concerned that some Filipinos they hire as offshore contractors may breach their trust, data and information security. We'd like to know, since the employers do not have any entity in the Philippines, can they report Philippines based Filipino workers to the Department of Justice for cybercrime if they steal, sell or destroy data? So here's what the Department of Justice raised, responded to us with. And this, this has some like, government wording in it, so bear with it. But so they say the normal course of action, therefore, is for them to file a report to their local law enforcement so that they can coordinate with their Philippines counterparts. Okay, let me pause there. First of all, law enforcement in the US Is unlikely to coordinate with their Philippines counterparts. So you can and should file a report in the U.S. however, let's move on. They may also file a complaint to the Nearest Philippine consular office by executing a consularized affidavit and sending it to the chief of National Bureau of Investigation, Cyber Crime Division, fifth floor. He gives an address here. It's quite a long address in Quezon City, Philippines. Or to the director of the pnp, Anti Crime Division, Camp Crame, Quezon City. So you have a couple options of where to send. Send something to in the Philippines to their anti cybercrime division. And then in their email they give us a link, two links actually, to where you can get contact information for these people, which he already sent us an address, but who wants to mail something physical? That's so that's super dumb. You could also report to the local police office in the area where that person lives. And if you have their name, well, you know, like there's people know each other, right. So it's reasonable to report it to the local police department and tell them what happened and file a report with them. The Philippines government again takes this really seriously. Like in California, there's this like 950 doll California theft law, which is what people are calling it, where if you get caught stealing, oh, if it's less than $950, well, whatever, you're fine, you're free to go. Yeah, in the Philippines that doesn't exist. You're going to jail if you get caught in all of this. I'm not a lawyer. I want to remind you, I'm not a lawyer and you should not listen to anything I say or take any advice from me. Listen to your lawyer, consult your lawyer, talk to an attorney, talk to the police, don't listen to me. Or hopefully and realistically, you won't be needing this. If you have hired someone well, and you treat them well and you try and gain their trust in you, it's just super, super rare that someone is going to steal something from you. Like I said, it happened last week. Someone told me that someone had stolen from them, but I haven't heard that story in a couple years now. So not that it doesn't happen, it's just we have hundreds of thousands of employers hiring people in the Philippines. It's just not common.
