From Batam with Love – Nude Chat Extortion by Chinese Organised Crime groups
The Asian Crime Century briefing 35
(Image: Chinese nationals arrested in Batam, source: Shanghai Daily, 31 August 2023)
On 29 August, the Riau Islands Regional Police arrested 88 Chinese nationals (83 men and 5 women) in a premises at the Kara Industrial Park in Batam, in Riau Islands province, for operating ‘love scams.
According to local reports in Batam, the police raided three premises in the Kara Industrial complex, a shopping complex in Sungai Panas, and a hotel in Seraya, where they seized 947 cell phones, computers and documents that were being used by the fraud syndicate. At least one of the premises was used for women involved in the love scams. A local Indonesian operator of “nightlife” businesses that include hotel and discos is reported to have been involved in the fraud syndicate, but has fled with the Chinese leader of the group.
The Riau Police have stated that the Chinese nationals used Batam because of the close proximity to Singapore and easy access to Jakarta. The relationship between Singapore and Batam is a complicated one, with many Singaporeans using the island as a holiday destination. However, there are reportedly around 300 brothels on Batam, which are officially illegal but are likely to operate due to low level corruption in the local police as well as collusion with the criminal operators. There have been reports for many years of a growing sex trade in Batam and also the increasing abuse of children for sex.
Local reports have stated that eight police officers from the PRC also took part in the Indonesian police operation. News media in the PRC has reported that in August the Ministry of Public Security sent a task force to Indonesia and launched a cooperation campaign with the Indonesian police against cyber and wire fraud, which led to the successful action.
Intelligence regarding the fraud syndicate was reportedly provided by the Ministry of Public Security of the People's Republic of China (PRC) to the Indonesian National Police, as an outcome of the 17th ASEAN Ministerial Meeting on Transnational Crime. The Joint Statement from the meeting, held at Labuan Bajo in Indonesia on 21 August, did not have anything to say about fraud or scams, surprising as this area of criminal activity seems to be endemic across Asia. However, as with much of ASEAN business it is likely that discussions of issues took place on the sidelines and intelligence was exchanged informally.
The ASEAN Ministerial Meeting on Transnational Crime was established in 1997, and the two conventions to have come from the group are the ‘Convention on Counter Terrorism’ (2007) and the ASEAN Convention Against Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children (2015). The group made a Declaration to prevent and combat cybercrime in 2017, but as that was several years before the explosion of online fraud, online illegal betting and gambling, as well as online sexual services, the declaration would not seem to have had a great impact.
Love Scams, or romance scams, involve criminals finding potential victims on dating apps or social media platforms where they use fake profiles, building relationships and then eventually asking for or extorting money from the victim with sexual videos taken from online chats.
To indicate the scale of the problem, the Hong Kong Police reported 700 ‘naked chat blackmail’ cases during the first half of 2022, an increase of over 43% from the previous year, with the youngest victim being 12 years old. In Mainland China, police in Jiangsu Province reported receiving 243 cases of nude chat extortion from December 2020 to January 2021.
In Singapore there were 203 reported cases of cyberfraud in the first half of 2022, most of which were nude chat extortion. The Singapore Police stated that cybercriminals had taken advantage of the COVID-19 pandemic to target more victims who were available due to the surge in online activity. The police stated that the most common platform used for the extortion was Instagram, followed by Facebook and Tinder.
In September 2022, INTERPOL reported that they had dismantled a transnational sextortion ring that extracted at least USD 47,000 from victims, with 34 cases back to the syndicate. The criminals contacted victims, based mainly in Hong Kong (China) and Singapore, through online sex and dating platforms before asking them to download a malicious mobile application via a hyperlink to engage in ‘naked chats’. The app was designed to steal their mobile phones contact lists, after which the syndicate would blackmail victims by threatening to circulate their nude videos to their relatives and friends.
The arrests in Batam are another indicator of the continued spread of Chinese organised crime groups across Asia. These groups have clearly penetrated multiple Asian countries, notably Cambodia, Indonesia, Myanmar, the Philippines, and even Singapore. The recent arrest by the Singapore Police of ten Chinese nationals involved in laundering around one billion Singapore dollars that is suspected to be the proceeds of crime revealed that nine of those arrested have been granted Cambodian citizenship between 2018 and 2020. Chinese criminal She Zhijiang, arrested in Thailand earlier this year, started his transnational criminal business operating online gambling from the Philippines, moved to Cambodia in 2017 (and was granted citizenship), and has been linked to fraud as well as human trafficking in Cambodia and Myanmar.
The arrest case in Batam is a small part of the wider collaborative police enforcement action that is required across Asia to stop these Chinese organised crime groups becoming even more entrenched. The danger is that they will be displaced again, and move out of Asia to other regions. To counter this threat, law enforcement agencies around the world need to understand these groups.