Escape The Hack: Countering Cyber Scams with an Immersive Experience for Everyday Indonesians
Contract Overview
Solicitation details, issuing organization, response deadlines, documents, and interested companies for this government contract opportunity.
AI Contract Overview
Indonesia is confronting a serious and growing cybercrime crisis, with decentralized scam operations increasingly linked to transnational criminal networks and returning expatriates from neighboring countries, exacerbating losses that have already exceeded $500 million in just four months and a mere two percent recovery rate for victims. The U.S. Mission to Indonesia, through the Public Diplomacy Section of the U.S. Embassy in Jakarta, is launching the “Escape the Hack” initiative—a 75-square-meter immersive escape room experience designed to educate the public on recognizing digital fraud, understanding the dangers of involvement in scam centers, and emphasizing the critical importance of immediate reporting to law enforcement. This project targets a key vulnerability in Indonesia’s anti-scam strategy: delayed victim reporting, which severely hampers the ability to intercept fraudulent transactions before funds are funneled across multiple accounts and jurisdictions. The initiative will be deployed in Jakarta and potentially expanded to Surabaya and another high-risk city, aiming to reach 3,000 daily visitors while generating national media exposure of at least 10 million impressions and training over 30 Indonesian cyber professionals. By combining interactive public engagement with high-profile launch events featuring U.S. and Indonesian government representatives, the program seeks to build a more cyber-literate population that actively participates in fraud prevention, thereby increasing the chances of recovery for both Indonesian and U.S. victims who suffer losses from scams delivered through social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and others using AI-powered deepfakes, voice cloning, phishing, and account takeovers. This cooperative agreement, solicited under PAS-JAKARTA-FY26-04 and funded with up to $300,000, is open to nonprofit or non-governmental organizations with demonstrated capacity to implement such a project, as for-profit entities are strictly ineligible as prime recipients. Applicants must submit a six-page narrative proposal, a two-page Monitoring and Evaluation plan, mandatory federal forms including SF-424, SF-424A, and SF-424B, letters of support from partners, key personnel resumes, and documentation of indirect cost rates and nonprofit status. All proposals are evaluated based on the quality and feasibility of the program idea (30 points), organizational capacity and track record (25 points), project planning (20 points), budget reasonableness (10 points), monitoring and evaluation rigor (10 points), and sustainability planning (5 points), with cost serving only as a tiebreaker. Selection involves a trade-off process
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Indonesia faces a pervasive and evolving cybercrime threat, with online scams growing in number and sophistication – while U.S. families continue to lose their life’s savings to international cybercrime, totaling over $12 billions in financial losses in 2023 alone. Unlike scam compounds in mainland Southeast Asia, criminal scam operations in Indonesia are decentralized and embedded within transnational networks. Thousands of Indonesian nationals have worked in scam compounds in Cambodia, Burma, and Laos, and there is now concern crackdowns in other countries prompting a wave of experienced Indonesian scammers to return home to establish new operations in collaboration with Chinese and other scam groups.
To strengthen its efforts in combating scams, Indonesia established an Anti-Scam Center (IASC) in 2024 to respond to citizen complaints, block fraudulent transactions, and recover victim funds. IASC data shows an average of 1,300 complaints per day. The IASC reports approximately $500 million in victim losses from November 2025 to March 2026, of which only $9.75 million has been recovered — a two percent recovery rate. To date, IDN law enforcement has not successfully recovered funds for U.S. victims. Officials state that victims’ delayed reporting (average of 24-48 hours) to the IASC and Indonesian National Police (INP) significantly contributes to law enforcement's inability to recover victim funds. Faster reporting directly correlates with higher asset recovery rates, as fraudulent transactions can be blocked before funds are transferred across multiple accounts or jurisdictions.
In addition to harming U.S. citizens, digital fraud hurts U.S. companies as cybercrimes increasingly rely on direct messaging, platform-specific targeting, and syndicate-level tactics, with social media platforms emerging as a major channel for phishing, malicious APK files, fake investment groups, video-call extortion, and account takeovers. Criminal scam groups also tailor tactics across platforms, using Facebook for marketplace, romance, and fake job scams; Instagram for fake investments and impersonation, other platforms are used for donation scams, quick-wealth schemes, and deepfakes. Criminals support these schemes with technical infrastructure such as lookalike domains, fake sub-domains, shortened links, QR-code redirects,
free SSL certificates, and resilient hosting to make fraudulent sites appear legitimate and harder to disrupt. Indonesia’s Cyber and Cryptography Agency (BSSN) assesses that AI will increasingly be used as a “double-edged sword” with perpetrators creating highly natural phishing, automated chatbot scams, voice cloning and deepfake videos to impersonate individuals.
The “Escape the Hack” escape room and launch event addresses these threats through a popular entertainment activity that provides an emotional triggering connection with victims. By educating Indonesian citizens on recognizing scams, the dangers of working in scam centers, and the importance of immediate reporting — the program targets one of the most actionable gaps in Indonesia’s current anti-scam framework. A more cyber-aware Indonesian public that reports scams promptly strengthens the law enforcement’s ability to block fraudulent transactions in real time, benefiting both Indonesian and U.S. victims. The launch event with expert speakers amplifies this message to the widest possible audience through workshops, media coverage, and social media, maximizing the program’s impact.
The “Escape the Hack” initiative advances U.S. strategic interests by building cyber resilience in Indonesia — ASEAN’s largest economy and most populous nation — making America safer and more prosperous. The program promotes the United States as a global leader in cybersecurity innovation and demonstrates American commitment to addressing shared security challenges through innovative, people-centered solutions.