City Police have asked victims of recent electronic scams to be patient as they conduct a joint investigation with banks to uncover the masterminds behind the crime that has fleeced money from accounts in several banks in the city.
Jakarta Police spokesman Sr. Comr. Boy Rafli Amar said it was difficult to follow up each report and track down perpetrators.
In the past month, the City Police has received a total of 26 reports from customers of four banks — BCA, BNI, Bank Permata and Bank Mandiri — alleging that they had lost savings through unauthorized transactions.
“Beside checking the victims’ claim about when and through what ATM they feel they lost their money with the bank, our officers must also need to collect supporting evidence from the field,” Boy told reporters Wednesday.
The four banks, according to Boy, have also been cooperative in helping the police follow up the victims’ reports by opening access to transaction data and providing CCTV footage from ATMs.
“Some victims, whose reports we have completely investigated, have recently received reimbursement from their bank,” Boy said, but did not disclose the number of the victims or their losses.
Digital forensic expert Ruby Alamsyah reiterated the police’s call.
“The point is, all digital transactions are traceable,” he told The Jakarta Post.
“So, it is important for those who feel they have lost money to the scam to file their reports first to the police.”
The central bank estimated that the amount of money stolen had reached around Rp 5 billion (US$550,000), suffered by hundreds of customers of at least six banks. When the first ATM cases surfaced in the media last month, a team consisting of officials and police officers from the National Police’s IT-based crimes desk was deployed to assist local police in conducting their investigations.
The police have so far arrested more than a dozen suspects in East Kalimantan, West Kalimantan, Bali, Yogyakarta and Jakarta for allegedly running separate organized syndicates to manage the fraud.
The techniques used by the suspects include attaching scanning devices to ATMs that are able to read electronic data on ATM cards, setting up fake hotline numbers to gather customer data, including their personal identification number (PIN) and selling customer data to other criminals.
Recently the police appear to be less open in divulging developments in the case to the media, triggering speculation that they were advised by banks to not to give too many statements to the press to maintain the public’s trust in bank security.
On Wednesday, Soemadi Saiman, a Bank Mandiri customer who reported Rp 60 million missing from his savings account, went to City Police headquarters after failing to settle the issue with his bank.
“The bank’s staff said they could not return my money until they first completed their investigation,” the 60-year-old man told reporters.
“When I asked why their investigation took so long, they said it was because there was no CCTV in two ATMs in Tebet, South Jakarta, where I frequently withdrew my money.”
“So, where is their responsibility?” he said.
