Indonesian police arrest admin of MLM-style Instagram network promoting online gambling sites

Police in Central Java, Indonesia, have arrested a 28-year-old woman they say ran a tiered network of paid Instagram accounts that promoted online gambling sites, earning money both from her own posts and from every endorser she recruited.

The Cyber Crime Directorate (Ditressiber) of the Central Java Regional Police arrested the woman, identified only by the initials RUI, on Sunday, November 1, 2026, in Bendo hamlet, Gedangan village, Tuntang district, Semarang Regency, according to a police statement released on November 3. Police describe her as the admin and recruiter of a network of online gambling endorsers.

From player to paid endorser

Directorate head Senior Commissioner Wahyu Nugroho Setyawan said RUI started playing online slot games in February 2025. In late 2025 she received an Instagram message from a user with the initials TAN offering her work as an endorser for an online gambling site.

The first contract ran for one month and paid Rp3 million (about US$180). In return she had to post links to the gambling site on her personal Instagram account every day, Wahyu said.

A tiered recruitment structure

Later in 2025 she was offered a fee for each person she could bring in as an additional endorser. She began recruiting Instagram users, forming what police call a tiered promotion network with herself as admin over several endorsers.

"This modus deserves attention because the suspect built a recruitment network involving other people. There is a tiered pattern resembling a Multi Level Marketing system, in which a person profits from the people they recruit to promote online gambling sites," Wahyu said in the statement.

Police said payments flowed from a central admin to RUI's bank account. She then paid each endorser after deducting the share agreed in advance. Officers seized proof of transfers and a black iPhone 15 they believe was used for the activity. The statement did not name the gambling sites, say how many endorsers were in the network, or identify the central admin.

RUI is being processed for gambling under Article 426(1) of Law No. 1 of 2023 on the Criminal Code (KUHP), the new code that came into force in January 2026.

Central Java police spokesperson Senior Commissioner Yuliyanto urged the public to be wary of social media job offers promising easy income, particularly endorser or admin roles that turn out to involve promoting gambling, and asked people not to share gambling links or recruit others to do so.

Promotion cases elsewhere

Indonesian police have announced several cases against online gambling promoters in recent days. On November 3, the Lampung Regional Police said they had named a man identified as BS as a suspect for sharing affiliate links to two gambling sites on Instagram and WhatsApp, Radar Lampung reported. On November 2, police in Tebing Tinggi, North Sumatra, said two students had been arrested for promoting a gambling site through TikTok live streams in exchange for a 5% cut of members' deposits, and that a futsal team manager had been named a suspect after the team's jerseys carried a gambling site's name, Mistar.id reported.

Earlier cases have involved SMS blasting campaigns in Makassar and TikTok live streams of virtual football betting in Central Java. Online gambling cases are now charged under the new code; see our explainer on how the Criminal Code and ITE Law apply to online gambling.

Photo: Elvinamonica / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0 (cropped)

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