Are these casinos the same thing as a POGO (Philippines Offshore Gambling Operation)? I don't really understand what the difference is, or what a POGO is, but there's always talk of them getting busted.
No po. These casinos are local casinos that has a massive number of Filipino users. While with POGO, their users aren't us but mostly Chinese people from mainland. So it was few years ago when POGOs were banned but the local casinos aren't. The problem with POGOs was that they're also been used to scam us hiding in their operations.
POGO's operation is centered on foreign gamblers. They don't actually operate for Filipino bettors, their costumers are usually based on China to that's why as we could see on media reports the person got hostage or beaten are mostly Chinese nationals to. The problem big problem is they are been engaging on human rights violation and scamming that's the reason government they should not operate also good that they choose to ban POGO operation in Philippines.
What's bad or concerning is they still allow local online gambling operators to operate their crazy business with misleading marketing tactics to attract lots of people to gamble on their platform. If government would just regulate them well and eliminate their biases for sure that everything will be fine towards this industry in Philippines.
Really interesting that there is a 50 million PHP bounty on the head of the informant, which is suspected to be issued by corrupt police officers in the National Capitol Region (per what I read in the articles linked in the OP). That's a lot of dough, almost $1M USD. Hopefully the informant is being kept in tight security. I imagine he would have to supply some kind of evidence / testimony that can be corroborated with others. His life will never be the same, having to look over his shoulder for the rest of his days... Scary.
It's not just his life but also his family's safety is included here. He's a guy that's been with Ang for a very long time and now that he's exposed him, he's really made Ang angry and that's why there's a bounty on him. Ang said that he's been treated like a brother to him and now he betrayed him. Very scary indeed and even the reporter, Emil Sumangil that interviewed the informant. His wife posted and asked for prayers for his safety as well.
Indeed he's life is totally in huge danger for exposing this anomalies that's why its not surprising to know if there's really a bounty for his head since he's hitting a big rock which is for long time hard to crack by anyone. So let see if they can see the bones of the affected gamblers in this case since if it happen that they locate all the bones then match it with DNA then this is huge case solve and this is huge achievement for investigating bodies for solving this long time issue.