Sri Lankan police arrested 37 Chinese nationals in Colombo on suspicion of running a Sri Lankan cyber scam centre. A police spokesman said this on Sunday.
The spokesman said police arrested the suspects, aged 23 to 44 and including one woman, after receiving a tip-off.
Police said the group had entered Sri Lanka on tourist visas and worked illegally. The spokesman added that two suspects had overstayed their visas.
A local police source said officers seized 35 tablet computers, 147 mobile phones and 100 SIM cards from the suspected scam centre in Talangama, a suburb of Colombo.
The arrests followed a wider crackdown on foreign-run online fraud networks in Sri Lanka. Also, police detained 152 foreign nationals a month earlier over an alleged cyber-scam operation at a hotel in the island’s northwest. Most of these individuals were Chinese.
Sri Lanka’s immigration authorities arrested 135 Chinese men and women in March over a similar alleged scam operation. Authorities later deported them.
Read: Sri Lanka Says Finance Ministry Cyberattack Stole $2.5 Million
China’s embassy in Colombo said at the time that it was working with Sri Lankan authorities. Their aim was to prevent Chinese nationals from conducting scam operations in the country.
The embassy said Sri Lanka’s telecommunications infrastructure, geographic location and relatively lenient visa policies had encouraged fraud gangs to relocate their operations to the South Asian nation.
Sri Lankan authorities detained 230 Chinese nationals and 200 Indian nationals in 2024. These arrests were over alleged cybercrime centres operating in different parts of the island.
