An Indonesian court has convicted 19 people for their roles in a trafficking network that sold babies to buyers in Singapore. The group recruited pregnant women, arranged false documents and transported infants overseas under the guise of adoption.
Lie Siu Luan, 70, received a seven-year prison sentence for coordinating the operation. The other defendants received sentences ranging from three to six years.
Trafficking babies under the guise of adoption
Luan hired brokers who posed as the babies’ biological mothers when dealing with prospective adopters. Other members of the group recruited pregnant women, cared for the infants and added false information to official documents.
The investigation began after Dani Hidayat, a resident of West Java, reported that someone had offered to buy his baby. The person contacted him after he joined a Facebook group while looking to adopt a child.
According to People:
The babies were sold for up to $13,179 each, along with fake documents created by the trafficking group.
During the trial, Luan admitted that she had sent at least 12 babies to Singapore in 2022. She maintained that she “didn’t know it was wrong” to send babies overseas for adoption. She claimed that her Singapore-based partner had convinced her the operation was legal.
Judge Gatot Ardian Agustriono sentenced Luan to seven years in prison and said:
Lie Siu Luan has been legally proven guilty of committing the criminal act of recruiting, harbouring, sending, transferring or receiving a person… for the purpose of exploiting [the babies].
When babies become commodities
The convictions follow the uncovering of an international baby trafficking syndicate in Indonesia last year. In July 2025, the Indonesian police arrested 13 people in West Java after uncovering a network that had sold at least 25 babies to buyers in Singapore for up to 16 million Indonesian rupiah ($893.16) each.
Recruiters targeted women experiencing financial hardship, abandonment and unwanted pregnancies. In some cases, babies were promised to buyers before they were born, while traffickers covered delivery costs before taking the infants shortly after birth. The network then moved the babies through caretakers and arranged fraudulent documents to send them to Singapore.
Children are not commodities
Baby trafficking for adoption isn’t the only way children get commodified this way. In orphanage trafficking, children—who may or may not actually be orphans—are kept in orphanages to attract donations. Freedom United has been advocating for the dismantling of the orphanage trafficking industry for years. Add your voice today.
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