Amid rumors of a supposed arrest, several pro-Duterte Facebook accounts are capitalizing on posts claiming that Sen. Ronald “Bato” dela Rosa, who is the subject of a warrant issued by the International Criminal Court, has surrendered to the National Bureau of Investigation. The posts are untrue and designed to attract clicks for monetization.
VERA Files traced the earliest copy of the claim to an Aug. 3 post by an FB page advocating for the 2028 presidential bid of Vice President Sara Duterte. It carried a photo set of the fugitive lawmaker interacting with men in uniform.
The post also bore the caption, “Senator bato delarosà sumukó na [shocked emoji] Sa mga NBÎ at nag salita at humingi… (Senator Bato dela Rosa has surrendered to the NBI, spoke out, and pleaded…),” but ended with the phrase “see more,” creating the impression that additional details would follow.
A tactic employed by some disinformation peddlers previously flagged by VERA Files, the teaser seemed intended to entice users to click the photo set, which contained an embedded link that redirects them to a product page on a popular e-commerce platform.
Dela Rosa remains at large
No verified reports substantiate online claims that dela Rosa surrendered to the NBI.
In fact, the agency’s Director Melvin Matibag said that the senator wanted by the ICC has yet to be apprehended, adding that their manhunt operation to locate dela Rosa is still ongoing.
The photos used in the spurious posts appeared to be screenshots from a video originally posted by a certain Alvin Go on May 13, after the shooting incident in the Senate. In the clip, dela Rosa was seen shaking hands with a police officer, not an NBI agent or official.
Notably, the fraudulent posts began circulating a day before the FB post of Jimmy Bondoc, one of dela Rosa’s counsels, saying: “Bad news is coming. Pray hard that it is not true, for the good of the nation.” The cryptic message, which can no longer be found on Bondoc’s official page, supposedly fueled speculations of dela Rosa’s arrest, according to some news reports.
Dela Rosa has remained at large since May 14 following a gun-firing incident in the Senate as authorities earlier attempted to serve him the ICC warrant.
The former police chief and enforcer of ex-president Rodrigo Duterte’s brutal anti-drug campaign is wanted by the international tribunal for the crime against humanity of murder in relation to the killing of at least 32 people between July 2016 and April 2018.
Coordinated clickbait posts
From Aug. 3 to 5, VERA Files identified at least 34 FB posts spreading the untrue claim. Their closely spaced publication times—from as little as a minute to several hours apart—raise the possibility of coordinated activity.
All posts used the photo set as a thumbnail to disguise affiliate links to several products on Lazada and Shopee, including food, cosmetics, phone cases, portable fans, and water tumblers. The links earn commissions for the accounts whenever netizens click and make purchases.
As of writing, the clickbait posts by Inday sa 2028 (created on Oct. 23, 2022 as Ver0níca Kittty D.), Kitty Duterte fanpage (July 11, 2023) and DU30 KITTY VEE (created on May 27, 2020 as Ｎａｔｈａｎ 願今。), among others, collectively garnered over 1,000 reactions. Another notable observation is a mismatch between the little to no interactions on posts from some of the documented FB pages and their thousands of followers.
