Indonesian authorities arrest 210 foreigners in Batam for allegedly running an online investment fraud ring targeting Europe and Vietnam.
BATAM: Indonesian authorities said on Friday they had arrested more than 200 foreign nationals near the island of Sumatra this week for allegedly running an investment scamming ring.
Immigration officers raided an apartment building in Batam, in Riau Islands Province, on Wednesday, where they found 210 foreigners and seized hundreds of computers and cellphones.
They arrested 125 Vietnamese nationals, 84 Chinese, and one person from Myanmar, immigration boss Hendarsam Marantoko told reporters in Batam.
Those arrested included 47 women.
An examination of the seized computers and cellphones suggested the group was engaged in online investment fraud or scam trading, said Yuldi Yusman, another official at the Indonesian immigration office.
“The victims were mostly located in Europe and Vietnam,” he said.
The suspects are being held at an immigration detention centre and face deportation and a ban from Indonesia, Yuldi said.
Indonesian police previously said that many scammers have moved to the country and elsewhere in Southeast Asia after a Chinese crackdown on networks there.
Indonesian police arrested 85 Chinese nationals and six Indonesians in 2019 over an online scam that tricked victims out of millions of dollars.
They arrested another 88 Chinese nationals in 2023, also in Batam, for running a syndicate that blackmailed hundreds of Chinese victims after luring them into sex acts that were videotaped.
Untung Widyatmoko, secretary of Interpol’s Indonesia bureau, told the news conference that Indonesia has become a favoured destination of scammers from Cambodia, Myanmar, Laos and Vietnam.
“We do not want our country, Indonesia, to become a safe haven for these scammers,” he said, vowing a crackdown.
