That's a pretty sad story... I guess the victims didn't know that coins.ph doesn't pay "interest"? A few months back I noticed on Facebook there was a flood of groups using variants of the name "Coins.ph Users" and so forth that were all just places where scammers could promote their telegram bots / cloud mining programs / ponzi schemes.. And you had loads of people commenting "Paano?" (how?) or "Still paying?" or "Legit?" It's like no man, none of them are ever "legit." People are tripping over themselves to join up with the next scam. Why can't people learn?
A lot of them have been shut down but new ones pop up in their place every day.
But this isn't only a problem for Philippines, we can find Ponzi all around the globe. Some local friends (in Mexico) told me they were investing in bitcoin, but their broker told them to better invest in OneCoin, he say that's better than bitcoin. If you go to google and search one coin you will see how it's a clear ponzi. Even wikipedia says it. So, the first rule to not fall into ponzi is to understand the easy money doesn't exist.
Sounds like an awful "broker"! How could somebody be a professional money person and not know how to recognize a Ponzi?