Why Indonesia, Malaysia’s idea on tighter visa rules to counter foreign scammers may not be ‘a cure’
Indonesia and Malaysia are considering tighter visa and immigration rules to combat criminal networks and scam syndicates that make use of foreigners, but experts caution that there are diplomatic and economic costs to consider.
Foreign nationals suspected of running an online gambling operation for two months at an office building, walk to be transported after being arrested in Jakarta, Indonesia on May 10, 2026. (Photo: Reuters/Willy Kurniawan)
JAKARTA: Memories of a traumatic past came rushing back when Ahmad received a message from a friend about a police raid on an online gambling hub in Jakarta on May 7.
The images were hauntingly familiar: hundreds of workers from different nationalities crammed inside a run-down building where they ate, slept and worked under constant surveillance, rarely allowed outside.
To Ahmad, it looked painfully similar to the scam and gambling compound in Laos where he was held for six months in 2024, forced to cheat victims online while living under the constant threat of beatings, electrocution and other violence from a ruthless criminal syndicate.
He managed to return to Indonesia only in late 2024 after paying his captors about US$20,000 for his release.
“For a long time, I thought those criminals only operated in faraway countries,” Ahmad, not his real name, told CNA.
Why Indonesia, Malaysia’s idea on tighter visa rules to counter foreign scammers may not be ‘a cure’
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Why Indonesia, Malaysia’s idea on tighter visa rules to counter foreign scammers may not be ‘a cure’
Indonesia and Malaysia are considering tighter visa and immigration rules to combat criminal networks and scam syndicates that make use of foreigners, but experts caution that there are diplomatic and economic costs to consider.
Why Indonesia, Malaysia’s idea on tighter visa rules to counter foreign scammers may not be ‘a cure’
Foreign nationals suspected of running an online gambling operation for two months at an office building, walk to be transported after being arrested in Jakarta, Indonesia on May 10, 2026. (Photo: Reuters/Willy Kurniawan)
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Nivell Rayda
Nivell Rayda
25 May 2026 06:00AM (Updated: 25 May 2026 09:10AM)
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JAKARTA: Memories of a traumatic past came rushing back when Ahmad received a message from a friend about a police raid on an online gambling hub in Jakarta on May 7.
The images were hauntingly familiar: hundreds of workers from different nationalities crammed inside a run-down building where they ate, slept and worked under constant surveillance, rarely allowed outside.
To Ahmad, it looked painfully similar to the scam and gambling compound in Laos where he was held for six months in 2024, forced to cheat victims online while living under the constant threat of beatings, electrocution and other violence from a ruthless criminal syndicate.
He managed to return to Indonesia only in late 2024 after paying his captors about US$20,000 for his release.
“For a long time, I thought those criminals only operated in faraway countries,” Ahmad, not his real name, told CNA.
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Commentary: Scam centres, human trafficking – Southeast Asian governments can do more for such victims
What unsettled the 28-year-old most was where the May 7 raid had taken place: a 20-storey white-and-blue building standing on one of Jakarta’s busiest streets.
“I passed that building every day. It’s barely 2km from where I work, where I’m trying to rebuild my life after escaping Laos,” he said, his voice trembling.
Analysts say the Jakarta raid was not an isolated incident, but part of what appears to be a broader shift in Southeast Asia’s sprawling cyber scam industry.
For years, many of the region’s largest scam and online gambling hubs operated out of loosely governed special economic zones in the border areas of Cambodia, Myanmar and Laos, where criminal syndicates were able to build billion-dollar operations.
But as governments in those countries come under mounting international pressure to crack down on these illegal operations, experts believe some syndicates are beginning to relocate - or expand - into other Southeast Asian countries such as Indonesia and Malaysia.
“The possibility of Indonesia or Malaysia becoming hotbeds for human trafficking into scam centres is very real,” Matt Friedman, chief executive officer of anti-human trafficking organisation The Mekong Club, told CNA.
The concern is increasingly shared by officials in Indonesia and Malaysia, where hundreds of foreigners and locals suspected of being involved in scam and online gambling operations have been arrested since early May.
Authorities in both countries believe criminal syndicates have been exploiting lax immigration controls and visa-free travel arrangements among members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), and are proposing tighter visa and immigration rules.
"Cases of foreigners involved in illegal activities, including those coming from countries granted visa-free entry facilities, give rise to (a need for) evaluation of policies,” Hendarsam Marantoko, director general of the Indonesian Immigration Office told AFP on May 13.
Currently, travellers from all ASEAN countries can stay visa-free in Indonesia for up to 30 days. Chinese and Japanese nationals, meanwhile, must obtain visas on arrival that are valid for 30 days and can be extended once for another 30 days.
Meanwhile, Malaysia’s police chief Mohd Khalid Ismail said at a press conference on May 15 that Malaysia’s visa policy “makes it easier for foreign criminals to operate in the country”.
In Malaysia, travellers from all ASEAN countries can stay visa-free for up to 30 days with the exception of Myanmar (14 days).
Meanwhile, Japanese nationals can enter visa-free for up to 90 days while Chinese citizens are allowed visa-free entry for up to 30 days per visit, with a maximum cumulative stay of 90 days within a 180-day period.
Thailand, which has also seen a rise in the number of crimes involving foreign nationals in recent years, on May 19 announced that it will reduce visa-free stays for travellers from more than 90 countries including Europe's 29-nation Schengen area, the United States and several South American countries.
Foreign Minister Sihasak Phuangketkeow had said that the plan to reduce visa-free stays was part of a crackdown on transnational crime.
The new visa-free duration would be decided on a country-by-country basis, Thai authorities said, with most foreign nationals granted stays of up to 30 days, while some could receive only 15 days.
But experts warn that tightening visa rules, particularly ASEAN’s long observed visa-free arrangements, could trigger diplomatic and economic backlash.
“Whether or not tightening immigration policies will be effective in preventing such crimes is questionable. These syndicates are highly resourceful and can adapt quickly,” Trubus Rahadiansyah, a public policy expert from Jakarta’s Trisakti University, told CNA.
A DETERRENT OR JUST A TEMPORARY SETBACK?
Officials and experts say scam syndicates often rely on foreign recruits who were brought into a country through fake job advertisements promising lucrative positions in customer service, marketing or technology.
Once inside the compounds, many victims find themselves trapped - their passports confiscated and movements restricted - before being coerced into carrying out online scams targeting victims around the world.
“These organisations prefer foreign recruits due to their vulnerability, lack of local ties, and lower likelihood of reporting crimes, which facilitates exploitative practices and minimises risks to the syndicates,” Friedman said.
This explains why relatively few locals have been arrested in many recent raids.
On May 6, Indonesian authorities arrested around 200 foreigners - most of them Chinese nationals - at an apartment complex in Batam allegedly being used for cross-border online scam operations.
Two days later, police in Surabaya, East Java arrested 37 foreigners from China, four from Japan, along with three Indonesians, over a suspected scam operation run out of a villa.
According to the police, the group allegedly impersonated law enforcement officers to extort victims.
Foreign nationals also dominated the arrests in Malaysia.
Between May 6 and 7, Malaysian authorities detained 127 Chinese nationals, 23 Malaysians, nine Japanese nationals, eight Vietnamese and seven Indonesians during raids across Klang Valley that uncovered alleged scam operations targeting victims both within and outside Southeast Asia.
Then on May 14, police in Iskandar Puteri, Johor arrested 35 Chinese nationals suspected of using artificial intelligence tools to conduct job scams targeting victims as far away as Spain.
“Tightening visa-free policies can reduce human trafficking by limiting the opportunities for syndicates to exploit vulnerable individuals,” Friedman said.
“Stricter immigration controls may deter traffickers and make it harder for them to operate, ultimately protecting at-risk populations from exploitation.”
However, not everyone agrees.
“This could potentially impact innocent travellers and legitimate business and undermine the commitment to free movement within ASEAN states, so it would be a drastic step,” Ivan Franceschini, a lecturer at the University of Melbourne and co-author of “Scam: Inside Southeast Asia's Cybercrime Compounds”, told CNA.
Franceschini argued that while syndicates have been known to exploit ASEAN’s visa-free system by recruiting workers from the region, tightening immigration policies would only force syndicates to look for other ways to bring in recruits.
“Many people have entered Myanmar, Laos, and Cambodia in violation of visa rules, often not even passing through formal immigration channels, so tightening visa rules is not necessarily a cure,” he said.
Wahyu Susilo, executive director of Migrant Care, a Jakarta-based advocacy group which has been campaigning for the return of hundreds of Indonesians still trapped by scam and online gambling syndicates abroad, believed that tightening immigration policies would only serve as a temporary setback for many syndicates.
“Are all victims trapped inside these criminal operations coming from countries that currently enjoy visa-free travel facilities?” Wahyu told CNA, highlighting the fact that Chinese and Japanese tourists looking to enter Indonesia still need to apply for a visa on arrival.
The activist said authorities should instead focus on preventing people from abusing their visa arrangements and overstaying.
“Tightening screenings at the border would only lead to profiling which is often based on stigma or stereotypes,” he said.
RAMIFICATIONS ABOUND
In 2006, the then-10 ASEAN member states signed the Framework Agreement on Visa Exemption to strengthen regional ties and deepen cooperation among countries in the bloc.
Timor-Leste, which formally joined ASEAN in October 2025, is not yet a signatory, although it already grants visa-free entry to citizens of several ASEAN countries like Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and Singapore.
“Undoing this agreement could upset relations among ASEAN members particularly if Indonesia or Malaysia are targeting people of certain nationalities,” said Trubus.
The public policy expert noted that Malaysia and China currently have a reciprocal visa exemption agreement which allows citizens of both countries visa-free entry for up to 30 days per visit, with a maximum cumulative stay of 90 days within a 180-day period.
Meanwhile, Indonesians can travel to China visa-free for up to 240 hours - or 10 days - and to Japan for holders of electronic passports registered at the Japanese embassy or consulate prior to departure.
“Indonesia or Malaysia tightening the rules in violation of existing agreements could trigger retaliation. That is something governments must think about,” Trubus said, highlighting the fact that tourists from China and Japan contribute greatly to Indonesia and Malaysia’s tourism industries.
According to the Indonesian Bureau of Statistics, more than 1.3 million visitors from China and 347,000 from Japan visited the country in 2025, contributing around US$1.6 billion and US$513 million to Indonesia’s economy respectively.
Tourism Malaysia recorded more than 4.66 million visitors from China and 416,000 from Japan visited Malaysia in 2025. On average, tourists in Malaysia spent around RM4,000 (US$1,008) per trip, according to tourism analysts cited by The Star.
Meanwhile, analysts warned that syndicates can still find multiple ways to circumvent any tightening of immigration regulations, including relocating operations to areas with weak law enforcement and high levels of corruption.
They could also increasingly recruit locally, luring people with promises of high-paying jobs in regions where poverty and unemployment remain high.
Syndicates may also force foreign recruits to travel through treacherous illegal routes along Indonesia and Malaysia’s porous land and maritime borders, where many migrants and trafficking victims have lost their lives over the years.
“They are resourceful, they adapt very quickly and they think several steps ahead,” said Michael Chong - head of the Malaysian Chinese Association’s (MCA) public services and complaints department - who has helped numerous Malaysians who were trapped working for scam syndicates overseas.
The MCA is a component party of the Barisan Nasional coalition in Malaysia that currently forms part of the federal government.
“By the time governments implement these regulations, the bad actors may already have moved elsewhere, leaving only ordinary travellers and legitimate businesses affected by the new rules.”
FOCUS ON EDUCATION AND BETTER COOPERATION
Instead of focusing primarily on tighter visa rules, analysts said governments should prioritise raising public awareness and strengthening cooperation among countries involved at every stage of the scam ecosystem - from the nations where workers are recruited, to the countries hosting scam compounds, and even those where victims are ultimately defrauded.
“Cooperation between countries and law enforcement agencies is key, because criminal actors operate across jurisdictions and gaps in information-sharing have often allowed them to evade justice,” Franceschini said.
He added that governments must also crack down on officials who may have colluded with, or turned a blind eye to, criminal syndicates setting up operations without scrutiny.
“There needs to be strong measures to prevent the same kind of symbiotic criminal-elite relationship that we have seen elsewhere from taking hold,” he said.
“Once that becomes entrenched, it is extremely difficult to unravel.”
Meanwhile, Chong of the MCA said greater public education remains one of the most effective ways to stop people from falling prey to scam syndicates in the first place.
“Law enforcement must work closely with the media,” he said.
“The media needs to keep highlighting these raids and prosecutions again and again so that these syndicates are deterred from expanding their operations.”
He also urged people approached with suspicious job offers or claims of urgent financial help to consult family members or trusted friends before making decisions.
Banks, Chong added, can also play an important role in detecting suspicious transactions, especially when elderly customers attempt to withdraw unusually large sums of money.
“If an elderly person suddenly wants to withdraw all their savings, banks should be alert,” he said.
“Sometimes a simple question from a bank officer can stop someone from becoming a victim.”
For Ahmad, it is equally important for governments to respond quickly to reports of human trafficking, slavery and abuse.
“When I was there, I didn’t know who to call or who to trust,” he said.
“Some of us did try to reach out for help, but either help never came or it came too late - when people had already disappeared or had been beaten beyond recognition.”
Ahmad said he still thinks about the fellow Indonesians he met inside the Laotian scam compound, many of whom may still be trapped there, unable to pay for their release or too terrified to escape.
“I have no way of contacting them,” he said.
“Before the raid in Jakarta, I would probably have told them: just find your way home to Indonesia, because at least you’ll be far away from these syndicates.
“But now,” he added quietly, “I don’t know what I would tell them anymore.”
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