Sri Lankan police have rearrested 30 foreign nationals who escaped from the Welisara Detention Centre and allegedly resumed running an online financial scam from a rented building in Boralesgamuwa.
The Mount Lavinia Divisional Crimes Investigation Bureau raided the premises and detained 21 Chinese nationals and nine Vietnamese nationals. Officers seized 10 computers, 29 iPhones, internet communication devices and other electronics that police say were used to operate the fraud.
The group had rented the upper floor of a two-storey building for a monthly rent of Rs. 1.5 million and had only recently moved into the premises, according to investigators. None of those arrested were carrying valid visas or passports at the time of the raid.
The suspects were among 152 foreign nationals taken into custody by the Criminal Investigation Department on April 2 in a sweep against online financial fraud, before being remanded at the Welisara Detention Centre under court orders. The fact that nearly a fifth of the original group escaped custody and immediately re-established a scam operation in the Colombo suburbs underscores the entrenched nature of the syndicate infrastructure documented in earlier site coverage of foreign cybercrime crackdowns and the Kollupitiya Vietnamese cluster.
Police have signalled that further investigations are underway, with the Mount Lavinia DCIB leading the probe. The case adds to a widening accountability arc that already includes the 628-foreigner year-to-date count and a 4,742-case AI-cybercrime parliamentary disclosure by the Public Security Minister this week.
Source: Newswire.
