Jakarta, Indonesia Sentinel — Indonesia’s Financial Services Authority (OJK) has identified increasingly deceptive tactics used by online gambling operators, including disguising betting platforms as currency exchange services and even as children’s storytelling websites.
Friderica Widyasari Dewi, OJK’s Chief Executive of Financial Consumer Protection and Education, said the operations behind online gambling have grown more sophisticated, making enforcement efforts more challenging. Despite ongoing crackdowns, illegal gambling activity continues to thrive across the country.
Among the newly discovered methods are the use of educational-themed platforms such as fairy tale websites, mobile phone credit deposits to obscure transactions, dormant bank accounts, and money changer services for laundering funds.
“In some cases, operators are reportedly using fake export-import schemes to disguise financial flows,” Friderica said Monday (May 26), as reported by Antara.
Friderica added that these schemes are deliberately designed to evade detection by the formal financial system and to mislead unsuspecting members of the public.
To combat the surge, OJK is tightening surveillance of suspicious transactions in cooperation with the Ministry of Communications and Digital and the Financial Transaction Reports and Analysis Center (PPATK).
So far, the agency has blocked around 14,000 bank accounts suspected of links to online gambling.
OJK is also ramping up digital literacy campaigns and public awareness efforts to educate citizens about the risks of online betting.
“This protection effort isn’t just about cutting off financial channels to illegal platforms, it’s also about shaping a more financially savvy and resilient society,” Friderica added.
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Earlier this month, Indonesian Police Chief Gen. Listyo Sigit Prabowo reported that authorities had handled 1,271 online gambling cases since November 2024 through a special task force involving 22 government institutions.
“Of those, 1,456 suspects have been named,” he said during a risk-based mentoring program at the PPATK building in Jakarta.
The police have also frozen 895 bank accounts linked to gambling activities, totaling around Rp133.5 billion (approximately $8.3 million), and seized an additional 4,820 accounts worth Rp328.78 billion, along with Rp276.5 billion in bonds.
(Raidi/Agung)
