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 to Beijing," an official at
Soekarno Hatta international airport Frans Yoseph said.
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.
PTI
