285 arrested after massive drugs haul seized by Indonesian authorities
Indonesian authorities said they arrested 285 people suspected of drug trafficking, including 29 women and seven foreigners, and seized more than half a ton of various substances during a two-month-long nationwide crackdown.
Indonesia is a major hub for drug trafficking in Southeast Asia despite having strict drug laws, with convicted smugglers sometimes executed by firing squad.
The head of the National Narcotic Agency, Marthinus Hukom, said the crackdown, launched between April and June across 20 provinces, also uncovered money laundering schemes by two drug syndicates and confiscated assets worth more than 26 billion rupiah (about £1.1 million).
Thirty-six of the suspects, including 21 women, were paraded in front of reporters, along with confiscated drugs, in their orange prison uniforms and hands handcuffed.
Mr Hukom said the women arrested were mostly housewives.
'I call on Indonesian women to be more vigilant in establishing friendships both in the real world and in cyberspace,' he said during a joint press conference with officials from the security affairs ministry and the customs office who took part in the operation.
One of the agency's deputies, Budi Wibowo, said authorities seized 683,885 grams (0.68 ton) of crystal meth, marijuana, ecstasy, THC, hashish and amphetamines, adding this helped stop them falling into the hands of 'more than 1.3 million people'.
Mr Wibowo also said that drug syndicates have used various methods to distribute narcotics to users via land and sea transportation or mail services.
The seven foreign nationals were an American, two Kazakhs, two Malaysians, an Indian and an Australian, Mr Wibowo said.
The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime says Indonesia is a major drug-smuggling hub in part because international drug syndicates target its young population.
In a separate operation, authorities in the province of Riau Island, exposed in May two cases of drug smuggling in its waters and seized 2.7 tons of crystal methamphetamine and 1.2 tons of ketamine, Mr Hukom said on Monday.
In 2023, authorities uncovered more than 52,000 of drug cases and confiscated 6.2 tons of crystal meth, 1.1 tons of marijuana and other types of synthetic narcotics, said Mochammad Hasan of the ministry of security affairs during the press conference.
Mr Hasan said the number increased in 2024 with more than 56,000 cases and confiscated 7.5 tons of crystal meth and 3.3 tons of marijuana, with a combine value worth 7.5 trillion rupiah (£340 million). Authorities have arrested a total of 27,357 drug suspects by November 2024, he said.
Early this month, three British nationals accused of smuggling nearly a kilogram of cocaine into Indonesia were charged in a court on the tourist island of Bali. They face the death penalty under the country's strict drug laws.
About 530 people, including 96 foreigners, are on death row in Indonesia, mostly for drug-related crimes, the Ministry of Immigration and Corrections' data showed.
Indonesia's last executions, of an Indonesian and three foreigners, were carried out in July 2016.
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WIRED
3 hours ago
- WIRED
Telegram Purged Chinese Crypto Scam Markets—Then Watched as They Rebuilt
Jun 23, 2025 12:48 PM Last month, Telegram banned black markets that sold tens of billions of dollars in crypto scam-related services. Now, as those markets rebrand and bounce back, it's done nothing to stop them. One month ago, the messaging app Telegram summarily beheaded the online industry of Chinese-language crypto scam services: It banned virtually all accounts related to the first and second most popular marketplaces for vendors offering money laundering, stolen data, and a variety of other illicit wares to the vast criminal enterprises carrying out investment scams from compounds across Southeast Asia. Then, Telegram watched impassively as those black marketeers rebranded, rebuilt, and returned to business as usual on the messaging service's platform. On Monday, crypto tracing firm Elliptic published a new report showing how the industry of Telegram-based Chinese-language black markets for crypto scammers has bounced back in the wake of Telegram's takedown last month of the two biggest of those bazaars, known as Haowang Guarantee and Xinbi Guarantee. Before Telegram banned the two markets' channels and usernames on May 13, they had together enabled a staggering $35 billion in transactions, much of which represented money laundering by crypto scam operations that steal billions from Western victims and force tens of thousands of people to carry out scams in forced labor compounds across Cambodia, Myanmar and Laos. Since Telegram's purge, however, Elliptic has found that other smaller markets have now grown to almost entirely fill the vacuum those two key marketplaces left behind—and Telegram appears to have no plans to stop them. In particular, one market called Tudou Guarantee, partially owned by Huione Group, the same parent company as the now-defunct Haowang Guarantee, has more than doubled in size, likely taking in many of the scammer-friendly services displaced by Telegram's bans and again enabling those fraudsters' billions of dollars a year in illicit revenue. Its main channel now has 289,000 users by Elliptic's count, close to the 296,000 users that Haowang Guarantee had at its peak. Xinbi Guarantee, too, has relaunched on new channels and regained hundreds of thousands of users, Elliptic says. In terms of sales, Tudou is now enabling around $15 million a day in crypto payments, close to the $16.4 million Haowang was facilitating daily, according to Elliptic. 'Telegram recognized this was illicit activity and the kind they didn't want to be hosting, and so they deleted the channels and banned the associated usernames. But it was clear that these people wouldn't just give up, that they would transfer to different marketplaces,' says Tom Robinson, Elliptic's cofounder. 'These scammers have inflicted misery on millions of victims around the world, stealing billions of dollars. Unless these marketplaces are actively pursued, they will continue to flourish.' Posts Elliptic shared with WIRED from Tudou Guarantee—now by some measures the biggest black market on the internet—show examples of money laundering services, offers of scam website development, and vendors selling stolen personal data that scammers use for targeting. Another Tudou post explicitly offers prostitution, including references to possible minors: 'Students, queens, lolita,' the post states next to pictures of young women. 'All available!!' WIRED reached out to Tudou Guarantee for comment via an administrator's Telegram account but didn't receive a response. Before they were taken down by Telegram, Xinbi Guarantee and Haowang Guarantee displayed similar posts offering explicitly illegal services in all those categories and more. Like the newly ascendant Tudou Guarantee, those other 'Guarantee' marketplaces didn't directly sell services, but instead offer escrow and deposit features that prevent vendors from defrauding customers. When WIRED asked Telegram in May about a report from Elliptic that focused on Xinbi Guarantee's criminal offerings, Telegram responded with a broad purge: It banned not only Xinbi's accounts but also those of Haowang Guarantee, the much larger market that had persisted for three years, enabled around $27 billion in transactions, and sold scam industry services as explicit as the batons and shackles used to imprison forced laborers in scam compounds. In a statement sent to WIRED at the time, Telegram spokesperson Remi Vaughn wrote that 'communities previously reported to us by WIRED or included in reports published by Elliptic have all been taken down,' and added that 'criminal activities like scamming or money laundering are forbidden by Telegram's terms of service and are always removed whenever discovered.' Since then, however, Elliptic has continued to share its findings about apparent money laundering activity on ten other markets, including Tudou Guarantee, in a Telegram group that included a WIRED reporter and a Telegram spokesperson. Yet Telegram didn't take down any of the accounts related to the black markets Elliptic highlighted. Xinbi Guarantee has, in fact, rebuilt at new accounts without even rebranding. It still hasn't faced new account bans, despite Telegram itself stating that the market's content violated its terms of service. In a statement to WIRED, a Telegram spokesperson defended the company's apparent decision not to ban the rebounding black markets. 'The channels in question predominantly involve users from China, where rigid capital controls often leave citizens with little choice but to seek alternative avenues for moving funds internationally,' the statement reads. "We assess reports on a case-by-case basis and categorically reject blanket bans—particularly when users are attempting to circumvent oppressive restrictions imposed by authoritarian regimes. We remain unwavering in our commitment to safeguarding user privacy and defending fundamental freedoms, including the right to financial autonomy.' Elliptic's Robinson rejects that argument. 'We've been researching these marketplaces for nearly two years now, and they're not about helping people achieve financial autonomy,' Robinson says. 'These are marketplaces that primarily facilitate money laundering for the proceeds of fraud and other illicit activity." Erin West, a former prosecutor who now leads the non-profit Operation Shamrock, an organization focused on disrupting crypto scam operations, states her accusation against Telegram more simply. 'These are bad guys, enabling bad guy business on their bad guy platform,' West argues. 'They have the ability to shut down a scam economy and the trafficking of human beings. Instead, they're hosting Craigslist for crypto scammers.' Telegram's seemingly inconsistent approach to banning crypto scam black markets may have less to do with its principles of 'financial autonomy' than with trying not to run afoul of the US government, says Jacob Sims, a visiting fellow at Harvard University's Asia Center. In early May, the US Treasury's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network officially labeled Huione Group a 'primary money laundering concern.' 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San Francisco Chronicle
6 hours ago
- San Francisco Chronicle
Indonesia arrests 285 in drug crackdown and seizes over half a ton of narcotics
JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) — Indonesian authorities said Monday they arrested 285 people suspected of drug trafficking, including 29 women and seven foreigners, and seized over half a ton of various narcotics during a two-monthlong nationwide crackdown. Indonesia is a major hub for drug trafficking in Southeast Asia despite having strict drug laws, with convicted smugglers sometimes executed by firing squad. The head of the National Narcotic Agency, Marthinus Hukom, said the crackdown, launched between April and June across 20 provinces, also uncovered money laundering schemes by two drug syndicates and confiscated assets worth more than 26 billion rupiah (about $1.5 million). Thirty-six of the suspects, including 21 women, were paraded in front of reporters, along with confiscated drugs, in their orange prison uniforms and hands handcuffed. Hukom said the women arrested were mostly housewives. 'I call on Indonesian women to be more vigilant in establishing friendships both in the real world and in cyberspace,' he said during a joint press conference with officials from the security affairs ministry and the customs office who took part in the operation. One of the agency's deputies, Budi Wibowo, said authorities seized 683,885 grams (0.68 ton) of crystal meth, marijuana, ecstasy, THC, hashish and amphetamines, adding this helped stop them falling into the hands of 'more than 1.3 million people.' The seven foreign nationals were an American, two Kazakhs, two Malaysians, an Indian and an Australian, Wibowo said. The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime says Indonesia is a major drug-smuggling hub in part because international drug syndicates target its young population. In a separate operation, authorities in the province of Riau Island, exposed in May two cases of drug smuggling in its waters and seized 2.7 tons of crystal methamphetamine and 1.2 tons of ketamine, Hukom said Monday. In 2023, authorities uncovered more than 52,000 of drug cases and confiscated 6.2 tons of crystal meth, 1.1 tons of marijuana and other types of synthetic narcotics, said Mochammad Hasan of the ministry of security affairs during the press conference. Hasan said the number increased in 2024 with more than 56,000 cases and confiscated 7.5 tons of crystal meth and 3.3 tons of marijuana, with a combine value worth 7.5 trillion rupiah ($454.6 million). Authorities have arrested a total of 27,357 drug suspects by November 2024, he said. Early this month, three British nationals accused of smuggling nearly a kilogram (over two pounds) of cocaine into Indonesia were charged in a court on the tourist island of Bali. They face the death penalty under the country's strict drug laws. About 530 people, including 96 foreigners, are on death row in Indonesia, mostly for drug-related crimes, the Ministry of Immigration and Corrections' data showed. Indonesia's last executions, of an Indonesian and three foreigners, were carried out in July 2016.
Yahoo
7 hours ago
- Yahoo
285 arrested after massive drugs haul seized by Indonesian authorities
Indonesian authorities said they arrested 285 people suspected of drug trafficking, including 29 women and seven foreigners, and seized more than half a ton of various substances during a two-month-long nationwide crackdown. Indonesia is a major hub for drug trafficking in Southeast Asia despite having strict drug laws, with convicted smugglers sometimes executed by firing squad. The head of the National Narcotic Agency, Marthinus Hukom, said the crackdown, launched between April and June across 20 provinces, also uncovered money laundering schemes by two drug syndicates and confiscated assets worth more than 26 billion rupiah (about £1.1 million). Thirty-six of the suspects, including 21 women, were paraded in front of reporters, along with confiscated drugs, in their orange prison uniforms and hands handcuffed. Mr Hukom said the women arrested were mostly housewives. 'I call on Indonesian women to be more vigilant in establishing friendships both in the real world and in cyberspace,' he said during a joint press conference with officials from the security affairs ministry and the customs office who took part in the operation. One of the agency's deputies, Budi Wibowo, said authorities seized 683,885 grams (0.68 ton) of crystal meth, marijuana, ecstasy, THC, hashish and amphetamines, adding this helped stop them falling into the hands of 'more than 1.3 million people'. Mr Wibowo also said that drug syndicates have used various methods to distribute narcotics to users via land and sea transportation or mail services. The seven foreign nationals were an American, two Kazakhs, two Malaysians, an Indian and an Australian, Mr Wibowo said. The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime says Indonesia is a major drug-smuggling hub in part because international drug syndicates target its young population. In a separate operation, authorities in the province of Riau Island, exposed in May two cases of drug smuggling in its waters and seized 2.7 tons of crystal methamphetamine and 1.2 tons of ketamine, Mr Hukom said on Monday. In 2023, authorities uncovered more than 52,000 of drug cases and confiscated 6.2 tons of crystal meth, 1.1 tons of marijuana and other types of synthetic narcotics, said Mochammad Hasan of the ministry of security affairs during the press conference. Mr Hasan said the number increased in 2024 with more than 56,000 cases and confiscated 7.5 tons of crystal meth and 3.3 tons of marijuana, with a combine value worth 7.5 trillion rupiah (£340 million). Authorities have arrested a total of 27,357 drug suspects by November 2024, he said. Early this month, three British nationals accused of smuggling nearly a kilogram of cocaine into Indonesia were charged in a court on the tourist island of Bali. They face the death penalty under the country's strict drug laws. About 530 people, including 96 foreigners, are on death row in Indonesia, mostly for drug-related crimes, the Ministry of Immigration and Corrections' data showed. Indonesia's last executions, of an Indonesian and three foreigners, were carried out in July 2016.
