The Philippine Charity Sweepstake’s Office (PCSO) in Cebu on Monday warned the public against illegal numbers game operators here who are using old “Peryahan ng Bayan” tickets.

Glen Jesus Rada, branch manager of PCSO-Cebu, said the old Peryahan tickets are no longer recognized by the agency and are already considered illegal when used in betting.

Old agents, he said, managed to sneak out from their old stocks of Peryahan tickets after the Court of Appeals ordered a status quo on the case filed by PCSO-accredited Peryahan operators.

Their case stemmed from the pre-termination of their contracts with the agency after Peryahan agents failed to remit the government share to PCSO, he added.

Although the old tickets do not look the same as the new PCSO-designed Peryahan tickets, Rada said their office received reports about their old agents using the old ones in soliciting bets.

“When the CA ruled on the status quo, Peryahan operators start to operate again but using the new format. However, there were unscrupulous agents who used the old format,” he told the Philippine News Agency (PNA) in Cebuano in a phone interview.

He said the old tickets bore the yellow color while the new ones’ have a color resembling a recycled paper, are three times bigger than the old ones and bear the PCSO logo all throughout.

Rada urged the Cebu City government to include illegal operators of Peryahan in their campaign against illegal gambling.

Apart from the Peryahan using the old tickets, he said the numbers game “Swertres” is also considered illegal and has to be included in police operations.

“We, in the PCSO Visayas, strongly appreciate the move or effort of the Cebu City government in the fight against illegal gambling particularly the illegal numbers game (Swertres), in support of all the PCSO games to sustain our charity programs,” Rada said.

He, however, clarified that the “recent operation by the Cebu City government against illegal numbers game was not the efforts of the PCSO but an implementation of a city ordinance.”

He also said in an earlier message sent to PNA that the PCSO did not lead in “another operation conducted by the Regional Special Operations Group (RSOG-7) in the past months as it was an execution of ordinary anti-criminality functions of that group.” (PNA)