Nineteen people have been jailed for purchasing and selling children for adoption.
Following a trial in Indonesia, one man and 18 women were convicted of trafficking 34 babies and forging documents to make resulting adoptions look legitimate.
At the least 20 of those babies were being sent to Singapore, 12 of which had already entered the country.
The syndicate’s leader, Lie Siu Luan, was sentenced to seven years in prison – lower than the ten years prosecutors had sought – after she admitted supplying babies to not less than 4 people in Singapore, who promised to pay not less than 18,000 Singapore dollars (£10,300) for every child.
The 70-year-old was also accused of hiring people to source babies, look after the youngsters, forge documents and act as brokers for the organisation.
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Nonetheless, she claimed she ‘didn’t know’ her actions were improper, and that her Singaporean partner had led her to imagine sending babies abroad for adoption was allowed.
Lots of the defendants claimed they didn’t know that what they were doing was illegal and that they thought they were ‘helping families’.
But all 19 were handed prison sentences following the trial in West Java on Tuesday.
These include six women who acted as caregivers for the trafficked babies, each of whom was sentenced to 3 years and 4 months behind bars.
Two more women received sentences of three years and 4 months for acting as brokers for the syndicate.
Djaka Hamdani Hutabarat, the one male defendant, was also found to have acted as a broker. He was handed a sentence of six years and 7 months.
The group’s predominant broker, Astri Fitrinika, received the identical sentence after she was found to have sourced many of the children involved within the trafficking scandal.
This included the kid of Dani Hidayat, the dad who brought the case to light after reporting his newborn baby kidnapped in April 2025.
Hidayat said a lady he had met online had taken his child before disappearing and becoming uncontactable.
Police later found Hidayat had met the girl on an adoption group on Facebook.
That woman was Fitrinika, who claimed she couldn’t have children and had offered to adopt Hidayat’s in exchange for money.
But when she failed to supply considered one of the payments, Hidayat went to the police – who, after catching Fitrinika and inspecting her phone, found she had procured many more babies.
Fitrinika was distraught within the courtroom, crying and hugging one other defendant as her verdict was read out, the BBC reported.
At the least considered one of the convicts is appealing their sentence.
Lai Siu Ha, considered one of the group’s predominant figures who falsified documents including birth certificates and Indonesian family cards, was handed a six-year, seven-month sentence.
Her lawyers said in an announcement that they were ‘disenchanted’ along with her sentence.
They said: ‘[While she] did perform the acts in query… what she did was purely in step with her assigned role, which related to the processing of civil registration documents.’
The lawyers also claimed there had been no evidence throughout the trial that showed she had committed document forgery.
The identical lawyers represent two other defendants, including Fitrinika, each of whom are considering their options.
But ringleader Lie is known to have accepted her fate.
‘This was a consideration from our client, essentially accepting the choice,’ her lawyers said.
‘What is obvious is that this continues to be a lot better than the demands of the prosecution service, who charged her with 10 years.
‘So I believe perhaps the judge’s consideration was that she regretted her actions.’
Indonesia’s Ministry of Social Affairs says children rescued from the trafficking cases will probably be assessed to find out their legal status and in order that probably the most suitable care arrangements could be established, including whether or not they could be safely returned to their biological family.
Otherwise, they could be placed in one other type of care ‘in accordance with child protection regulations, with the goal of ensuring protected, legal, and long-term caregiving.’
There are eight babies still under state care. They’re being taken care of at an orphanage in West Java.
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