The government of Indonesia has frozen a total of 33,252 bank accounts after detecting that their owners gambled on online casino platforms.
The Financial Services Authority (OJK), the country’s top financial regulator, confirmed it has told commercial banks to carry out the blocks, freezing millions of dollars’ worth of funds.
The OJK operates an automated detection system that combs commercial bank account transaction data for evidence of gambling-related transactions.
These usually involve deposits or withdrawals to platforms flagged as online casino sites.
Using online casinos is illegal in Indonesia. Courts can impose strict punishment on offenders, including long jail terms, hefty fines, and even corporal punishment.
The body says commercial banks use Enhanced Due Diligence (EDD) checks to follow up on suspected incidences of online gambling.
The anti-money-laundering agency, the Financial Transaction Reports and Analysis Center, can also suspend or cancel welfare benefit payments not only for gamblers, but also for their entire families.
To date, the center has halted benefit payments to over 600,000 families in gambling-related investigations.
Indonesia Has Frozen 1,000 Accounts in the Past Month
An OJK executive, speaking at a press conference, said the agency has blocked around 1,000 accounts in the past four weeks alone.
The OJK also called on banks to “strengthen their verification checks” by matching data with citizens’ National Identity Numbers (NIKs), wrote the Indonesian media outlet Infobank News.
Despite the OJK’s crackdown, police say that a crime wave of online casino-related crime continues to gather momentum.
In many cases, police say desperate gamblers are causing a stir on social media with fabricated muggings and robberies, the Indonesian media outlet Kompas reported.
The most recent of these incidents took place in South Kalimantan on May 6, officers said, where residents found a traveling meatball (bakso) vendor lying on the side of a road in the village of Jilatan.
The residents took pictures of the man, who later told them he had been the victim of a violent assault.
Two motorbike-riding assailants, he told them, had beaten him and stolen his money.
After filing a police report, detectives questioned the vendor and said they found inconsistencies in his statement.
“The information he provided does not correspond to the facts on the ground or the results of our investigations,” said a police official.
When challenged, the vendor reportedly confessed he had invented the whole story “due to pressing economic needs.”
A police official said the robbery “was staged so that the vendor’s wife would believe he had been robbed and was therefore unable to provide any money.”
Other Fabricated Mugging Reports
Police in several other parts of the country have reported similar cases in recent months.
In January, a man in Pacitan Regency, East Java, sold his motorbike to a friend and slashed his own hand with a knife before filing a bogus police report.
He told officers he had been mugged by bandits, but later confessed to inventing the story after losing around $200 gambling online.
And in March, a man in Kendari, Southeast Sulawesi Province, posted about a “violent mugging” on social media.
The post went viral, with the man claiming he had been attacked in the street.
Police followed up and found he had also fabricated the story to “avoid a scolding from his wife.”
Civil law courts around the country, meanwhile, have reported a huge spike in online casino-related divorces.
Judges and court clerks in many parts of Indonesia have recently said that gambling is now the leading cause of divorce.
Several courts say women instigate most of these divorces after their husbands’ gambling habits lead to a collapse in family finances.
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The government of Indonesia has frozen a total of 33,252 bank accounts after detecting that their owners gambled on online casino platforms. The Financial Services Authority (OJK), the country’s top financial regulator, confirmed it has told commercial banks to carry out the blocks, freezing millions of dollars’ worth of funds. The OJK operates an automated
The post Indonesia Has Frozen 33,000+ Citizens’ Bank Accounts; Online Casino Crackdown Intensifies appeared first on CasinoBeats.