Indonesia Has Blocked Over 33,000 Bank Accounts as Online Casino Crackdown Escalates

(AsiaGameHub) –   Indonesia’s government has frozen a total of 33,252 bank accounts after identifying that the account holders used online casino platforms for gambling.

The Financial Services Authority (OJK), Indonesia’s leading financial regulatory body, confirmed it instructed commercial banks to implement these freezes, locking up funds worth millions of dollars.

The OJK operates an automated detection system that sifts through transaction data from commercial bank accounts to find evidence of gambling-related activity.

These transactions typically involve deposits to or withdrawals from platforms flagged as online casino sites.

Online casino usage is illegal in Indonesia. Courts can impose severe penalties on offenders, including long prison sentences, substantial fines, and even corporal punishment.

The OJK states that commercial banks use Enhanced Due Diligence (EDD) checks to follow up on suspected cases 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 for their entire families as well.

To date, the center has halted benefit disbursements to over 600,000 families as part of gambling-related investigations.

Indonesia Freezes 1,000 Accounts in the Last Month

An OJK executive, speaking at a press conference, said the agency has blocked around 1,000 accounts in just the past four weeks.

The OJK also called on banks to “strengthen their verification checks” by matching data with citizens’ National Identity Numbers (NIKs), according to Indonesian media outlet Infobank News.

Despite the OJK’s crackdown, police report that a wave of online casino-related crimes continues to gain momentum.

In many cases, desperate gamblers are stirring up attention on social media with fabricated mugging and robbery stories, as reported by Indonesian media outlet Kompas.

Officers said the most recent of these incidents occurred in South Kalimantan on May 6, where residents found a traveling meatball (bakso) vendor lying by the roadside in the village of Jilatan.

Residents took pictures of the man, who later told them he had been the victim of a violent assault.

He claimed two motorbike-riding attackers had beaten him and stolen his money.

After filing a police report, detectives questioned the vendor and 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.”

Additional 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, slashed his own hand with a knife, and then filed 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.

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 across the country, meanwhile, have reported a sharp rise in online casino-related divorces.

Judges and court clerks in many parts of Indonesia have recently stated that gambling is now the leading cause of divorce.

Several courts say women initiate most of these divorces after their husbands’ gambling habits lead to a collapse in family finances.