The Cybercrime Investigation and Coordinating Centre (CICC) is the latest government agency in the Philippines to deploy a Proto AI agent. The CICC deployment aligns with its ongoing Scam Ba Yan? initiative and Proto’s scaleup of an integrated AI citizen support and complaints management system with Gates Foundation implementation funding.
This deployment marks a significant evolution in the Philippines' digital public infrastructure, with the Cybercrime Investigation and Coordinating Centre stepping forward as a key access point for citizens to report financial scams that disproportionately affected the newest and most vulnerable consumers. With its large newly-banked population, the Philippines is particularly susceptible to the illicit scam industry, which is estimated to have stolen $1 trillion from the global economy and 1.9% of the Philippines GDP last year, according to the Global Anti-Scam Alliance.
CICC’s mandate to protect citizens from cybercrime aligns with the objective of the Proto project to ensure that Filipino consumers — especially those facing cyber threats and online fraud — can resolve complaints more quickly, fairly, and transparently. This mandate is paired with aggressive outreach initiative, such as this month’s Scam Ba Yan? (”is that a scam?”) campaign to educate financial consumers on attack vectors.
The deployment of CICC’s AI agent — alongside Proto’s other deployments with the country’s central bank and securities commission — enables the opportunity of rapid AI-based routing of scam reports between government agencies. The CICC currently operates a manual contact centre tasked with triaging and forwarding cases for investigation. As of mid-2025, CICC reported over 25,000 scam complaints, the majority involving phishing (34%), investment fraud (27%), and account takeover (18%).
Unfortunately, less than 1% of scammed funds in low and middle-income countries (LMICs) are recovered as report lodging and processing often exceeds the critical 24 hour window of opportunity to trace and freeze funds. CICC’s discreet, 24/7 AI agent will slash intake and referral times by overcoming the challenges of manual resource constraints and victim embarrassment.
Gates Foundation Senior Program Officer Jeremiah Grossman said: “The Foundation is investing in consumer protection AI tools with the goal of building trust in digital services for the lowest-income communities. Through these projects, we hope to demonstrate the value of an automated grievance redress system for citizens, regulators, and governments—and catalyse broader adoption across emerging markets.”
The Gates Foundation’s partnership with Proto is focused on six LMICs, including the Philippines and concurrent deployments in African nations such as Namibia.
Preparing for a unified anti-scam ecosystem with an AI agent backbone
The Philippines is entering a new era of digital consumer protection, combining advanced artificial intelligence systems with a coordinated national anti-scam framework. These measures are reinforced by new legislation such as the Anti-Financial Account Scamming Act (RA 12010), enacted in 2025 to criminalise “money-mule” activities and mandate stricter fraud-detection obligations for banks and e-wallets. Meanwhile, the proposed Philippine Scam Prevention Center (PSPC) Act seeks to institutionalise a permanent national anti-scam centre under CICC to consolidate data, manage a unified scam database, and lead policy coordination.
To operationalise this legislative vision, Proto and its design partner, the University of Cambridge SupTech Lab, led diagnostic and design phases from December 2024 to April 2025 involving 26 national government agencies. The work culminated in a design sprint at the University of the Philippines Bonifacio Global City Campus, producing shared consumer complaint taxonomies, standardised triage workflows, and a technical blueprint now deployed on the Proto platform.
Using the Proto AI agents, Filipino consumers can lodge text and voice complaints in local languages like Tagalog and Cebuano via websites and messaging apps. Complaints are categorised using Proto’s proprietary natural language processing engine, matched with the appropriate agency or agencies, and tracked through a unified referral system.
Notably, both the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) were already live on Proto’s platform through earlier direct deployments.
The CICC deployment integrates Proto’s AI agents directly into the government’s existing 1326 National Anti-Scam Hotline, operated by the Cybercrime Investigation and Coordinating Center (CICC) under the Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT). Established in 2023 as part of the National Cybersecurity Plan 2023-2028, the hotline functions as the primary national reporting and support channel for online scam victims. It connects to the Inter-Agency Response Center (I-ARC), linking CICC operations with the Philippine National Police Anti-Cybercrime Group (PNP-ACG) and National Bureau of Investigation Cybercrime Division (NBI-CCD).
CICC Director Rojun Hosillos said: “Our partnership with Proto reinforces the government’s vision of a safer digital Philippines. By integrating AI into our 1326 National Anti-Scam Hotline and Inter-Agency Response Center, we can process citizen reports faster, coordinate with law-enforcement agencies more efficiently, and ultimately recover more funds lost to scams. This system strengthens the backbone of national digital trust — empowering every Filipino to report fraud in real time and see that action is taken.”
The Proto platform enhances this ecosystem by allowing government agencies to streamline scam reporting across jurisdictions in line with the Citizen’s Charter “3-7-20” rule — acknowledge within 3 days, address within 7, resolve within 20. Real-time dashboards display resolution metrics, sectoral trends, and sentiment analysis, while AI agent switching enables seamless hand-offs between agencies without forcing citizens to restart their complaints.
Proto CEO Curtis Matlock said: “The Philippines is setting a global example for coordinated anti-scam governance. By linking advanced AI systems with proactive legislation and citizen-facing tools managed by the CICC, the country is building not just a hotline — but a living, intelligent infrastructure for public trust in the digital economy.”
Proto’s work since 2019 with the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP), the country’s central bank, has already demonstrated the system’s performance at scale. The AI-powered assistant has processed over 276,000 support sessions annually, facilitated 14.4 million messages, and resolved 89% of queries without human intervention. These outcomes enabled the BSP to absorb a dramatic surge in complaints during the COVID pandemic without expanding operational overhead.
About the Cybercrime Investigation and Coordinating Centre
The Cybercrime Investigation and Coordinating Centre is the primary government agency mandated to implement the Cybercrime Prevention Act of 2012 and coordinate the prevention, investigation, and suppression of cybercrime in the Philippines. Under the Department of Information and Communications Technology, the Centre ensures the protection of citizens from cybercrime threats and fosters a safe digital environment. With a strong mandate for cybersecurity, the CICC plays a vital role in investigating cyber incidents, coordinating law enforcement responses, and building public trust in digital services.
