IMMIGRATION officers refused to let a Filipina travel to Cyprus after she showed them a fake Belgian passport she purchased on TikTok.

Identified as Josephine, the Filipina attempted to depart for Ercan, Cyprus, via a Kuwait Airlines flight on September 5 at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport Terminal 1.

Josephine said that she was transiting from Kuwait to Izmir, Turkey.

But immigration officers noted numerous inconsistencies in her passport and supposed arrival stamps.  

The matter was then elevated to the duty supervisor, who in turn submitted the documents for forensic screening.

The BI’s forensic documents laboratory confirmed that Josephine’s passport, residence card, and immigration stamps were all fake.

”She was about to be arrested for being an illegal alien after insisting that she is Belgian when she admitted that she has a Philippine passport and used to be an overseas Filipino worker in Israel,” the BI said in a press release on Saturday. 

”She was deported from Israel earlier this year for working without a valid visa, but [she] came across a TikTok video offering EU passports to travel visa-free to multiple countries. She allegedly paid a total of P700,000 for her fake documents. She was promised work in Greece as a caregiver, with an offer of P180,000 [in] salary per month.”

Josephine is currently in the custody of the Inter-Agency Council Against Trafficking (IACAT) for assistance and the filing of appropriate charges against her recruiter.