Nineteen members of child trafficking ring jailed over illegal adoptions

Nineteen people have been jailed for buying 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 least 20 of these 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 10 years prosecutors had sought – after she admitted supplying babies to at least four people in Singapore, who promised to pay at least 18,000 Singapore dollars (£10,300) for each child.

The 70-year-old was also accused of hiring people to source babies, care for the children, forge documents and act as brokers for the organisation.

However, she claimed she ‘didn’t know’ her actions were wrong, and that her Singaporean partner had led her to believe sending babies abroad for adoption was allowed.

Many 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 three years and four months behind bars.

Two more women received sentences of three years and four months for acting as brokers for the syndicate.

Djaka Hamdani Hutabarat, the only male defendant, was also found to have acted as a broker. He was handed a sentence of six years and seven months.

The group’s main broker, Astri Fitrinika, received the same sentence after she was found to have sourced most of the children involved in the trafficking scandal.

This included the child of Dani Hidayat, the dad who brought the case to light after reporting his newborn baby kidnapped in April 2025.

Hidayat said a woman he had met online had taken his child before disappearing and becoming uncontactable.

Police later found Hidayat had met the woman on an adoption group on Facebook.

That woman was Fitrinika, who claimed she could not have children and had offered to adopt Hidayat’s in exchange for money.

But when she failed to produce 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 in the courtroom, crying and hugging another defendant as her verdict was read out, the BBC reported.

At least one of the convicts is appealing their sentence.

Lai Siu Ha, one of the group’s main figures who falsified documents including birth certificates and Indonesian family cards, was handed a six-year, seven-month sentence.

Her lawyers said in a statement that they were ‘disappointed’ with her sentence.

They said: ‘[While she] did carry out the acts in question… what she did was purely in line with her assigned role, which related to the processing of civil registration documents.’

The lawyers also claimed there had been no evidence during the trial that showed she had committed document forgery.

The same lawyers represent two other defendants, including Fitrinika, both of whom are considering their options.

But ringleader Lie is understood to have accepted her fate.

‘This was a consideration from our client, essentially accepting the decision,’ her lawyers said. 

‘What is clear is that this is still much better than the demands of the prosecution service, who charged her with 10 years.

‘So I think maybe the judge’s consideration was that she regretted her actions.’

Indonesia’s Ministry of Social Affairs says children rescued from the trafficking cases will be assessed to determine their legal status and so that the most suitable care arrangements can be established, including whether they can be safely returned to their biological family.

Otherwise, they may be placed in another form of care ‘in accordance with child protection regulations, with the goal of ensuring safe, legal, and long-term caregiving.’

There are eight babies still under state care. They are being looked after at an orphanage in West Java.