Dozens of Chinese people have been arrested in Indonesia on suspicion of running an online romance scam network that has claimed hundreds of victims in China, police said on Wednesday.
Indonesian police were alerted by their Chinese counterparts and arrested 83 men and five women at an industrial park in the city of Batam in Riau Islands province on Tuesday.
“We are investigating whether there are Indonesians among the victims. If there are none, the crooks will be expelled immediately,” Riau Islands police spokesman Zahwani Pandra Arsyad told AFP on Wednesday.
The network extorted hundreds of victims in China, many of whom were government officials. The women used by the network claimed to fall in love with their victims during video calls.
They are accused of seducing the victims and then inciting them to engage in sexual acts online, while other suspects recorded the videos. The group then allegedly blackmailed the victims and threatened to post the videos on social media if they refused to send them money.
Police did not provide any information about how long the group had been active or how much it earned.
After China cracked down on domestic extortion rings, many fraudsters migrated to Indonesia and other Southeast Asian countries. In 2019, Indonesian police had already arrested 85 Chinese and six Indonesians over an online scam that stole millions of dollars from victims.