Foreign drug syndicates have been recruiting Filipino drug couriers through social networking websites, the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA) said Friday.

PDEA Director General Dionisio Santiago said he learned this through their Filipino informant whom he identified as “Lady Gaga.”

During a press conference at the PDEA headquarters Friday morning, Lady Gaga said she was able to meet members of a drug syndicate through two social networking websites, namely, “persona.com” and “Tagged.”

Apart from these websites, Santiago said the drug syndicates also recruit couriers through introductions by other persons, where, at times, syndicate members even woo Filipinas to be their girlfriends.

Santiago said that members of foreign syndicates who have been recruiting Filipinos as drug mules were mostly black Africans.

Wearing a black mask and veil over her head, Lady Gaga was at the PDEA to receive her reward money amounting to P194,880 for helping the PDEA and other Asian foreign anti-narcotics agencies in tracking down members of an international drug syndicate.

Santiago said that the information she provided led to a two-week joint international operation that resulted in the arrests of syndicate members in Thailand, China and Malaysia as well as confiscates a total of 2.1 kilograms of cocaine which is worth around P12 million.

Lady Gaga recounted that when she met the syndicate online in 2008 she never knew that she would eventually become a drug mule.

She said that the syndicate offered to pay her US$2,000 and travel abroad as long as she delivered items for her. Initially, they gave her an electric fan which she did not know had contained cocaine.

Eventually, Lady Gaga came to learn from syndicate members that she was actually transporting cocaine.

The informant said the modus operandi of the syndicate is sending drug mules to an Asian country where they will stay for two weeks until they get the cocaine. There they are given board and lodging, food and allowances.