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Alan Robles

The job ads posted on several Philippine military forums on Facebook in 2023 looked enticing.
“We are hiring regional security researcher,” said a notice bearing the emblem of Janes – the well-known international aerospace and military technology publisher. It came with an eye-watering offer: “US$1,000-US$5,000.”
“Send us your CV,” the ad urged, giving Viber and WhatsApp numbers as well as an email address.
The hitch: while the ad was real, the recruiter was not.
Researchers who traced the ad’s digital fingerprints say it appears to have been part of a wider online recruitment ecosystem – one that investigators believe helped build the alleged Chinese spy network that Philippine authorities said last month they had dismantled inside the country’s defence establishment.
The Philippine National Security Council announced in early March that at least three Filipino civilian defence workers had been arrested after they confessed to passing sensitive information, including details of resupply missions in the contested South China Sea, to handlers said to be linked to Chinese intelligence.
China has rejected the allegations.
In a statement, Chinese embassy spokesman Ji Lingpeng said Beijing “firmly opposes and strongly deplores irresponsible remarks made by certain Philippine agencies peddling so-called Chinese spy narratives”, describing them as “malicious smears”.
He said “China follows the principle of non-interference in other countries’ internal affairs”.

The arrests have heightened concerns in Manila about insider threats in the defence sector amid rising tensions with Beijing over disputed waters in the South China Sea, where the two countries’ vessels have repeatedly clashed.
Scrutiny has now turned to how the alleged recruits were approached.
When digital disinformation expert Carlos Nazareno ran a WHOIS domain registration lookup on the email addresses in the Janes ad – hrteam@janesgroup.work and hrteamrobin@janesgroup.work – he said the results pointed to China.
In a 2024 report for Newsbytes.ph, Nazareno said he had identified at least five other Facebook sites inviting Filipino defence specialists to contribute: three purported to be real companies – International Military Forums, Military Media and Service Publications – while Military Express and Comcast Military Media were fake.
Nazareno said not all the impostors could be directly linked to China.
Applicants were typically asked to submit their curriculum vitae and write sample reports, for which they were paid a few thousand pesos.
The ad for the site pretending to be Service Publications offered between 4,000 pesos (US$66) and 40,000 pesos for “military writers”, Nazareno’s report said, with a noted “preference for those with government or military experience”.
The Janes ads appeared to be part of efforts linked to China to draw unsuspecting Filipino defence specialists and researchers into giving up their CVs and key information – or becoming outright spies, Nazareno said.

The giveaways were consistent across the pages of the Facebook accounts that were created only in 2023, Nazareno said. The contact numbers were local Philippine mobiles, and the links and emails were traced to China-registered domains, while the posts in English were poorly written, he added. Some of the impostor sites also used photos lifted from the real defence portals.
The impostor pages flagged in his report abruptly shut down in 2024, shortly after his findings began circulating on Facebook.
Nazareno said that the fake recruiter ads “were probably the same operation or related to the recent Filipino spies recruited online”.
Earlier this month, This Week in Asia asked Colonel Francel Margareth Padilla, the spokeswoman for the Armed Forces of the Philippines, about the impostor companies.
She replied: “The [armed forces] caused a website to be taken down. The site was recruiting retired and active-duty military officers to do research and writing. That’s all I will say.”
At a media forum on March 7, Philippine Navy Rear Admiral Roy Vincent Trinidad said of the three suspects: “The recruitment effort [started with them] applying for a job, posting their résumés online on different apps. Somebody would contact them asking for a report, [the recruiter would read] the report and say, we like this.
“After that, the next reports they were asked to write would have specific directions.”
He added that the contributors would eventually be asked to write up confidential information.


Trinidad said all three suspects became involved because of money.
One suspect received a mobile phone with a messaging app hidden within the game Tetris to communicate with handlers, while payoffs involved cash concealed in fake food deliveries. He said he was asked for the schedule of rotation and resupply missions to and from Palawan Island.
In an interview with This Week in Asia last month, Trinidad declined to disclose more details due to the sensitivity of such cases.
A source who asked not to be named spoke about their experience. The source, who used to work for the defence department, was called late 2023 by someone claiming to be connected with Janes.
“They presented themselves as Filipinos,” the source said. “They told me their recruitment process meant I had to submit an article to them.”
According to the source, “the recruiters were asking if I wrote anything for the navy, then gave me a topic – the feasibility of creating a maritime militia for the Philippines”. The source stopped talking to the recruiters.

Nazareno, who said he had not seen any fake company ads lately, noted that the impostor sites used methods similar to those of Singaporean Yeo Jun Wei, also known as Dickson Yeo.
In 2020, Yeo pleaded guilty in a US federal court to acting as an illegal agent of Chinese intelligence and was sentenced to 14 months in prison.
According to the US Department of Justice, he set up a fake consultancy in 2018 – using the same name as a prominent US consulting firm – and trawled LinkedIn to solicit US military and government employees. He paid them to write reports on sensitive US topics, the department said, without telling them the material was being passed to the Chinese government.
One screencap made by Nazareno of one impostor page purportedly showed Philippine military men bragging about their qualifications.
“I’m Sgt Major of one unit of intelligence service AFP [Armed Forces of the Philippines] before I retire with 35 years active service,” one wrote.
“I was directly involved in the MILF [Moro Islamic Liberation Front] massive military campaign in year 2000 at Matanog, Mindanao,” another said.
The source, who declined to be identified, said “the recruiters were offering 40,000 pesos. Civilian employees in the military are getting loose change. They’re very vulnerable because they’re underpaid. There needs to be more awareness about it”.


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How fake military job ads in Philippines led to alleged spy recruitment pipeline

The Janes ads appeared to be part of efforts linked to China to draw unsuspecting Filipino defence specialists into giving up key information. Photo: Handout

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Fake Janes job ads targeted Filipino defence workers with cash offers. Photo: Handout

A screencap reportedly shows Philippine military officials boasting about their qualifications. Photo: Handout

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The ads, some of which experts say were linked to China, aimed to get unsuspecting Filipino defence specialists to give up key information


The ads, some of which experts say were linked to China, aimed to get unsuspecting Filipino defence specialists to give up key information.


How fake military job ads in Philippines led to alleged spy recruitment pipeline

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}The ads, some of which experts say were linked to China, aimed to get unsuspecting Filipino defence specialists to give up key information

The ads, some of which experts say were linked to China, aimed to get unsuspecting Filipino defence specialists to give up key information