What Price Power?
National elections are approaching and legislative candidates need deep pockets. Indonesia will on April 17, 2019, hold simultaneous direct elections...
Scams in the City
We Was Robbed!
Criminals pretending to be victims of theft are likely to be caught once police get involved. It’s not an unfamiliar...
Sextortion Risk Remains High
In a society where pornography is illegal and moral hypocrisy is high, undressing for a video call is fraught with...
Bali Getting Tougher on Fugitives
The resort island used to be a paradise for foreigners fleeing legal problems, but the risk of deportation is rising....
King Con Convicted Again, Gets No Prison Time
Remember Dimas Kanjeng, the murderous conman who pretended he could create money out of thin air? He was convicted of...
Arrested Playwright Duped by Fool’ Gold
A troubled dramatist has fallen victim to a scam involving idiotic claims about the secret gold of an Indonesian king....
Blessing Scammers Busted in Bali
Yet again, professional scammers are being mislabelled as hypnotists. Police in Bali have arrested a gang of seven scammers, including...
Sextortion Scam Uses Hacked Passwords
Indonesia continues to block pornographic websites, but people living here continue to view them, putting themselves at risk of a...
Natural Disaster Fraud
Natural disasters can bring out the worst in a handful of people. After the September 28 earthquake and tsunami that...
Phony Breast Cancer Doctor Jailed
Staying healthy in Indonesia is hard enough without being exposed to quackery. A court in Bali has jailed a bogus...
Magic Money Boxes and Jenglot
Conmen are still tricking gullible people into believing that money can be magically increased by mystical and mythical objects. The...
UAE Boxing Coach Scammed in Jakarta
The Asian Games were a great success, marred only by a few scandals and controversies, including a Palestinian expatriate scamming...
Setting the Crooked Record Straight
Some foreigners are involved in hypnotism scams in Indonesia, but the media should not be too hasty to blame Singaporeans....
Old Singapore Dollars for New Rupiah
A gang of scammers is targeting elderly people in Jakarta by offering Singapore dollars at an exchange rate that’s too...
Not So Sweet Anymore
Condensed milk producers will no longer be allowed to falsely market their sickly sweet product as a health food. Growing...
Here, Have a Photo of One Million Dollars
Pull up a chair. In the 1950s, there was a groundbreaking British radio series called The Goon Show. It was...
The Stealing Season
It’s that time of the year again, when some people are resorting to crime to raise money to return to...
Correctional Crimes
Inmates at a jail in Bandung were running a scam for two years in which they seduced women online and...
Jember Friendship Ambassador Scammed by Foreigners
I once asked a long-time Australian expatriate why he had made Indonesia his home for over 40 years. Was it...
Hatching Hoaxes
Indonesia made international tabloid headlines a few weeks ago when it was reported that a teenage boy from South Sulawesi...
Those Possessed By Demons?
The weighty Indonesian dictionary compiled by the Education Ministry defines kesurupan as “possession by Satan or spirits, resulting in strange...