Indonesian authorities have deported to China 153 Chinese citizens involved in an online romance fraud scheme that netted $1.3 million (1.2 million euros), it was announced on Friday.
“They are part of a network that commits crimes in Indonesia but targets victims of Chinese descent,” said Subki Miuldi, director of the immigration office in the city of Batam, where the deportations took place on Wednesday, according to a statement.
The deportees violated Article 75 of Indonesia’s immigration law, the same note said, which stressed the importance of “cooperation with the community in the transmission of information” to “maintain the stability and security of the country.”
The victims were also Chinese nationals; the investigation found that hundreds of them had been approached and seduced by female members of the organization via video calls, then extorted with sexually explicit recordings, Hong Kong newspaper South China Morning Post reported.
According to the police investigation, the organization started this year from Indonesia, where it entered on a tourist visa, after authorities in Beijing dismantled the network in China.
In 2017, Indonesia arrested and deported 416 Chinese and Taiwanese citizens who were members of an online telephone and investment fraud network, and two years later the country arrested and deported 85 citizens involved in a similar case back to China.
Source: DN
