Indonesia flags US$18bn online gambling flows in 2025, exposing deep links to cross-border cybercrime

Indonesia: The amount of money moving through online gambling networks linked to Indonesia reached Rp286.84 trillion (around US$18 billion) in 2025, underlining the scale of a digital industry that authorities say remains deeply entwined with fraud and organised transnational crime.

According to Indonesia’s financial intelligence unit, PPATK, the figure represents the total circulation of gambling-related funds over the year.

Although this was 20 per cent lower than the Rp359.81 trillion recorded in 2024, the agency stresses that the ecosystem is still vast and highly active.

Throughout 2025, 422.1 million individual gambling transactions were detected, with deposits alone amounting to Rp36.01 trillion (US$2.4 billion). Some 12.3 million people transferred money to gambling platforms via banks, e-wallets and the national QR payment system (QRIS).

Despite the year-on-year fall in total value, online gambling continues to dominate suspicious financial activity reports received by the state.

Of 183,281 suspicious transaction reports flagged to PPATK, nearly half (47.49 per cent) were linked to fraud, followed by deception (18.71 per cent) and corruption (5.73 per cent).

Overall financial reporting to the agency surged. In 2025 it received more than 42.7 million transaction reports, up 25.5 per cent from the previous year. From this data it produced almost 1,000 analytical dossiers and hundreds of intelligence briefings for investigators, covering funds worth a combined Rp2,085.48 trillion (US$138 billion).

For foreign observers, these figures illustrate two simultaneous trends: some contraction in headline gambling turnover, but growing detection of illicit financial flows around it.

A transnational industry run from abroad

Indonesian police say most major operators targeting Indonesian gamblers are not based in the country at all.

According to Inspector General Krishna Murti of the Indonesian National Police, control centres are largely located in the Mekong subregion, particularly in China, Myanmar, Laos and Cambodia.

These operations are described as “mafia-style” syndicates running cross-border businesses that blend online casinos, cyber fraud and money laundering. Investigations have found that Indonesian nationals are often recruited as customer service staff, marketers or technical operators to penetrate the domestic market more effectively.

The COVID-19 pandemic, with its mobility restrictions and rapid shift to online activity, accelerated this model. Criminal groups professionalised their infrastructure, cloning websites and operating mirror domains to evade blocks in jurisdictions where gambling is illegal.

The result is a borderless marketplace: Indonesian players wager from their phones, while servers, payment routing and corporate control sit in foreign jurisdictions with looser enforcement or complicit local power structures.

Border casino hubs in the Mekong

Across parts of mainland South-East Asia, physical casino towns have become anchors for digital gambling and cybercrime operations.

In Myanmar’s border zones, large casino developments have reportedly expanded into cryptocurrency laundering and online fraud under the protection or influence of armed groups. Projects such as Yatai New City on the Thai border have been accused by international analysts of acting as covert financial hubs aimed largely at Chinese gamblers.

Laos has promoted casino zones as part of its economic liberalisation, targeting visitors from neighbouring countries where gambling is restricted. These zones double as bases for online operations serving foreign markets.

Cambodia has seen especially rapid growth. Border towns and coastal cities have filled with casinos since the 1990s. While the sector brings tax revenue, independent estimates suggest profits from associated cyber-fraud operations now exceed US$12.5 billion a year, an extraordinary sum relative to the country’s official GDP.

Taken together, criminal syndicates operating from these Mekong locations are estimated to generate over US$43 billion annually. Beyond gambling, they facilitate human trafficking, run scam call centres and sell money-laundering services to other criminal networks.

Engineered addiction in a frictionless digital system

Back in Indonesia, sociologist Andreas Budi Widyanta of Gadjah Mada University argues that the persistence of online gambling is not merely a law-and-order problem but a systemic digital one.

Modern platforms, he says, are built on gamification: colourful interfaces, rapid reward cycles and near-miss effects designed to keep users playing. Winning and losing are not simple chance events but outcomes shaped by algorithms optimised for prolonged engagement and steady losses by the player.

Crucially, Indonesia’s fast-growing digital finance ecosystem makes spending almost frictionless. Mobile banking, instant top-ups and even online loans can all be triggered from the same smartphone that hosts the gambling app.

This creates what Widyanta describes as a self-reinforcing loop: easy credit and instant payment meet psychologically engineered games, producing addiction that cuts across income levels.

With a population of roughly 284 million and rising internet penetration, Indonesia represents an enormous potential customer base. That scale makes the country a prime target for offshore operators.

Politics, regulation and an “absent” state

Allegations that Indonesian politicians have been linked to Cambodia-based gambling networks have fuelled public controversy.

Widyanta cautions that involvement in such networks can touch anyone, from ordinary citizens to public officials, as either victims or perpetrators.

For him, the deeper issue is institutional readiness. He argues that legal instruments and enforcement capacity have not kept pace with digital transformation, leaving personal data protection and platform governance weak.

He proposes three priorities: widespread public digital literacy to expose the manipulative mechanics of online gambling; stronger regulation of digital corporations and data use; and more consistent law enforcement that reaches powerful actors as well as ordinary offenders.

Until those elements align, Indonesia’s experience suggests that even when total gambling turnover dips, the underlying transnational system remains intact: technologically sophisticated, geographically dispersed and financially interwoven with broader patterns of cybercrime.