Pig-butchering schemes, honey traps: Telecom-fraud networks target Indonesia as regional crackdowns bite

[BEIJING] Telecom-fraud networks displaced by enforcement campaigns in Cambodia, Myanmar and other South-east Asian scam hubs are expanding into Indonesia, Chinese authorities said, underscoring how quickly the region’s illicit fraud industry shifts bases.

The Chinese Embassy in Indonesia said on Wednesday (May 27) in a post on social media that there are signs a growing number of people formerly engaged in telecom and online fraud in Cambodia and other countries are moving to Indonesia to continue their operations.

Indonesian authorities have already dismantled multiple scam dens, the embassy said.

Chinese diplomatic missions in Indonesia said they had recently received several requests for help from Chinese citizens who had fallen victim to fraud, with many suffering heavy financial losses.

The scams emerging in Indonesia include impersonation of government officials, foreign-exchange fraud, visa scams, so-called pig-butchering schemes, honey traps and investment or trading fraud, the missions said.

The warning was not the first from Chinese diplomats in Indonesia. In January 2025, the embassy and consulates described several common tactics used by fraud rings.

In one, scammers build trust with victims before offering unusually favourable exchange rates in the name of friendship, then fabricate transfer records or use other methods to disappear with the money.

In another, they use official-sounding language to persuade victims to click links or download software under the pretext of verifying or changing personal information.

Some pose as large, legitimate investment institutions, promoting low-risk, high-return products through polished platforms and fake screenshots showing profits or positive user feedback.

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Indonesia has been on the radar of telecom-fraud operators for more than a decade. According to China’s Ministry of Public Security, Chinese police have travelled to Indonesia multiple times since 2011 to combat telecom-fraud crimes.

In 2013, Chinese and Indonesian police dismantled four telecom-fraud sites in Jakarta and arrested 63 suspects, including 54 from the Chinese mainland and nine from Taiwan. The operation solved nearly 100 telecom-fraud cases involving China, with more than 40 million yuan (US$5.9 million) at stake. The groups had call centres in Indonesia and money-transfer and cash-withdrawal operations in Taiwan, the ministry said.

In 2023, Chinese and Indonesian police launched a joint operation targeting nude-chat extortion sites on Indonesia’s Batam Island and in Kalimantan. In two rounds of arrests, police detained 153 suspects and solved more than 100 cross-border extortion cases involving victims across several Chinese provinces and cities.

A person who has long tracked the telecom-fraud industry previously told Caixin that the movement of people is the backbone of the business, making it a cross-border whack-a-mole problem for law enforcement.

As China intensified domestic enforcement several years ago, telecom-fraud and other criminal groups moved in large numbers to Kokang and other parts of northern Myanmar.

Since China launched a special campaign in 2023 against scams targeting Chinese citizens from northern Myanmar, Chinese and Myanmar authorities have arrested more than 53,000 Chinese nationals suspected of involvement. Large scam compounds near the Chinese border have been eliminated, Chinese authorities said.

Myawaddy, on the Thai-Myanmar border, also became a major scam hub. In January 2025, the case of Chinese actor Wang Xing, who was lured to Myawaddy, triggered public outcry in China and prompted further enforcement that squeezed telecom-fraud operations and related black- and gray-market businesses in the area.

The pressure has pushed some operators farther afield.

In January, Cambodia began cracking down on telecom-fraud operations, including those linked to Prince Group. In April, China’s Ministry of Public Security said some scam operators and related black- and gray-market personnel had moved from other countries to Sri Lanka, where police later repatriated 125 suspected telecom-fraud participants to China.

Some operations have also shifted toward the Middle East. On May 17, China’s Ministry of Public Security said police from China, the US and the United Arab Emirates had conducted their first joint operation against telecom and online fraud in Dubai, dismantling nine scam sites and arresting 276 suspects.

The groups used social media to build romantic relationships with victims before inducing them to invest in purported high-return cryptocurrency projects, the ministry said. CAIXIN GLOBAL