September 12, 2012: Filipino police recently arrested 357 members of a Chinese gang that committed their crimes (various types of fraud and theft) via the Internet. Most of those arrested were from China and Taiwan and had set up shop in the Philippines to avoid Chinese police. Two of the ringleaders were Filipinos of Chinese ancestry.

While China is the largest practitioner of Internet espionage, it is also one the main victims of Internet based crime. China is tolerant of hackers who work for the government and only steal from foreigners. Chinese hackers who prey on Chinese Internet users are hunted down and jailed, or worse. So these Chinese Internet gangsters have sought foreign bases.

The Philippines has long been a favorite place for international criminals to operate from. This was especially true of Internet based crime. But that has changed as major governments become more adept at tracking down where the actual criminals are located and making arrangements with police in those countries to take down these gangs. For a while Filipino police were reluctant to get involved because these crooks were smart enough to be good citizens where they were operating from. But now it's understood that this attitude just makes it easy for criminals to set up shop somewhere else and plunder the country that is a sanctuary for some gangs. The age of Internet sanctuaries is coming to an end.