A BUREAU of Fire Protection (BFP) officer was arrested in Pampanga over alleged illegal recruitment.
Criminal Investigation and Detection Group Central Luzon field office chief Colonel Grant Gollod said the suspect, a female Senior Fire Officer 1 who had been in the service since 2017 and was assigned to the National Capital Region (NCR) District 3, was arrested in an entrapment operation on August 24, 2026.
He said the operation stemmed from a complaint of an aspiring BFP officer who said that the suspect initially asked him for P500,000 in exchange for getting into the service.
“Ang modus gumagamit siya ng dummy account through Messenger, kino-contact niya ‘yung mga applicants through Facebook. Bale, kapag nasa FB page ng BFP ‘yung mga aplikante, randomly inisa isa niya, kino-contact yun gamit ‘yung dummy account niya. So kapag may sumagot, doon na nagsisimula yung transaction,” said Gollod.
(The modus operandi involves using a dummy account through Messenger to contact applicants via Facebook. When applicants are on the BFP’s Facebook page, he randomly selects and contacts them one by one using his dummy account. Once someone responds, that’s when the transaction begins.)
The police official said the suspect, who claimed to have colluded with a senior officer in carrying out the scheme, had secured slots for at least four other applicants for P100,000 each in the past year.
Gollod said the senior BFP official the arrested suspect was referring to is currently under probe.
BFP spokesperson Fire Superintendent Anthony Arroyo said the implicated Senior Fire Officer 1 was immediately suspended from her post while dismissal proceedings were initiated.
He said around 20,000 to 30,000 individuals applied for 2,504 slots in the BFP for this year’s recruitment process. This includes the complainant on the case who was accepted into the service and will take his oath along with others on September 15.
Arroyo said they are also looking into the four individuals who allegedly paid the arrested suspect in exchange of being admitted to the BFP. (TPM/SunStar Philippines)