Bali Police arrested on Tuesday 103 Chinese nationals for alleged cyber fraud.

The 92 men and 11 women were arrested in two houses in Denpasar and another house in Badung regency. Police also arrested 11 Indonesians who were allegedly working for the Chinese nationals. 

"They were targeting Chinese nationals living in [China]. They were working from abroad to make it harder for the Chinese police to track them. They did not just operate in Indonesia; many of them had worked in other countries," said the Bali Police's special crime director, Sr. Comr. Anom Wibowo.

Anom added that the suspects had contacted their victims in China by phone, pretending to be the authorities.

"They had many ways to trick their victims. They told the victims that a family member had gotten into an accident and needed money for emergency medical treatment. Or they threatened their victims and extorted them," he said. 

The arrest was the result of a joint investigation conducted by the Bali Police's special crime directorate, the Counter Transnational and Organized Crime (CTOC) task force and the SABATA antibandits, street crime and anarchism unit.

"The investigation took time. We saw suspicious behavior from these people [that] was similar to other fraudulent cyber activities previously uncovered in Bali," Anom said.

The police later raided three houses in connection to the case on Tuesday, seizing multiple mobile phones, routers and laptops allegedly used to commit fraud. (ebf)

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