Sri Lanka Customs officers at Bandaranaike International Airport (BIA) in Katunayake arrested nine Chinese nationals in the early hours of Thursday who they believe had arrived in the country to commit computer-related financial crimes.
The group was stopped at the Green Channel after landing at 12:25 a.m. on China Eastern Airlines flight MU-6912 from Kunming. Customs officials said the suspects had concealed a haul of electronic communication devices valued at Rs. 24,020,000 by taping them to their bodies and hiding them inside their clothing.
Seized items included 383 used mobile phones worth Rs. 17.5 million, 101 tablet computers valued at Rs. 6.47 million and six Wi-Fi routers fitted with GPS trackers estimated at Rs. 30,000. Sri Lanka Customs has ordered the forfeiture of the goods, citing violations of import regulations.
The suspects are being detained by airport customs pending further investigation.
The arrest is the second large-scale airport seizure of suspected cybercrime equipment brought in by Chinese nationals in a week. On April 10, customs seized 84 mobile phones from a different group arriving via BIA, also suspected of being used for cyber-enabled fraud. Sri Lanka has repatriated 125 Chinese nationals to Beijing this year in connection with telecom fraud rings operating from the country, and the Chilaw cyberscam case saw 152 foreign nationals arrested in a single raid.
Investigators have previously described Sri Lanka as a transit and staging point for cross-border online fraud syndicates targeting victims in East Asia, with concealed mobile-phone banks used to run victim-facing messaging operations at scale.
