76 China fraud suspects deported from Indonesia

JAKARTA—Indonesia deported 76 Chinese nationals on Saturday who were among hundreds rounded up across Asia in connection with an alleged massive online fraud, officials said.

Seventy-six Chinese and 101 Taiwanese nationals were arrested in 15 different sites across the Indonesian capital on Thursday following requests by Chinese and Taiwanese police.

“We have deported 76 Chinese nationals with a chartered flight departed at 14.18 (0718 GMT) to Beijing,” an official at Soekarno Hatta international airport Frans Yoseph told Agence France-Presse.

He said that the Taiwanese nationals had not yet been deported.

Nearly 600 suspects, including 410 Taiwanese and 181 Chinese nationals, were nabbed in a carefully planned operation spanning six countries for allegedly running Internet and telephone scams mainly targeting mainland Chinese.

They were arrested in Taiwan, China, Cambodia, Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand on Thursday.

Details of the scams are sketchy and appeared to have varied from country to country, but police believe thousands of people were taken in.

In Indonesia, the suspects rented houses with broadband access and, posing as officials, made phone calls over the Internet to con victims in China, Taiwan, the Philippines and Vietnam into giving them money, police said.