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onsumers in Asia were shocked by recent crackdowns on members of organized online crime networks. Nearly 600 people were arrested across Asia, including in Indonesia, as a result of efforts coordinated by regional police. Countries involved in this operation included Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Taiwan, Cambodia and China.

Most of the suspects are Taiwanese (410 people) and Chinese (181). In Indonesia, the Indonesian National Police arrested 177 suspects at 15 different locations in Jakarta and its surrounding area. Of this number, 101 are Taiwanese and 76 are Chinese. The total losses caused by this syndicate have not been estimated.

Despite somewhat sketchy details on the alleged scam (which appear to vary from country to country), the statements from the authorities of the countries such as Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand suggest that the offenders contacted their victims and tricked them into transferring money into several bank accounts owned by the gang. In Malaysia, for example, the scammers were calling their victims in China by means of an Internet phone service and asking them to pay traffic summons into an online account or else they would face court action.

Thousands of people had reportedly been conned by the scam. According to the Indonesian National Police, a similar modus had been used in Indonesia to target victims in China.

From this case we can see that online scams don’t always require sophisticated computer skills as the perpetrators in this scam generally used common VOIP applications to make phone calls over the Internet. They key behind the “success” of this crime is presumably the perpetrators’ communication skills.

In crime prevention studies this is also known as “social engineering”, a method of obtaining sensitive information that would otherwise be inaccessible through the exploitation of human nature (e.g. trust) often by means of deception. In this online scam, at least, social engineering defeated all the anti-fraud technology in place by attacking its weakest spot, humans.

In other words, the offenders stole victims’ money without actually breaking into their bank accounts. Thai Police said the “element of surprise” is key in “engineering” the victims into believing that they are contacted by real government officials demanding some sort of payment (e.g. fines).

This case is a hard lesson on the importance of consumer education on fraud issues. Clearly the scam would not have been successful if the potential victims were aware of the situation. Their lack of awareness must have been recognized by the offenders beforehand.

This is probably why the scammers were willing to make huge “investment” to facilitate their offenses in the forms of, for example, traveling to other countries such as Indonesia and Malaysia to set up their “headquarters”.

According to the police, in Indonesia the offenders were renting houses with high-capacity broadband connections that cost them up to Rp 600 million (US$70,000) a month. In other words, although the total losses from the offenses have not been calculated yet, they are expected to far exceed the criminals’ “investment”, particularly since the scam had been going on for several years.

Consumer education should thus be at the forefront of efforts to combat fraud. The advance of technology may have facilitated payment activities, but it also creates opportunities for crimes to occur. It does not matter how sophisticated the security technology in use is, as soon as the human elements are compromised there will be nothing that can stop criminals from stealing from their victims.

Another lesson from this Asia-wide scam is that criminals are now seemingly becoming more and more organized, day by day. Information and communication technology has been used to organize hundreds of scammers to prey on victims. This will surely create jurisdiction problems in tracking down and apprehending offenders. This is also why collaboration between police agencies of different countries is needed to crack down on such international crimes.

The raids on 15 different locations in Jakarta and surroundings, for example, were conducted on the basis of information and requests from the Chinese and Taiwanese police agencies. Because of the known adaptability of organized crime syndicates, the joint operation was carried out simultaneously in several countries to prevent offenders from escaping.

Globalization affects many aspects of life, including how crimes are perpetrated. Many organized criminals are now expanding their activities at an alarming rate. They even have their own “underground economy” that provides them with, among other things, necessary means to ensure the success of their criminal activities.

Therefore, cooperation among law enforcement agencies is an important element in combating transnational crime and should always be enhanced to ensure that resources are allocated effectively and efficiently.

The writer is the director of the Center for Forensic Accounting Studies at the School of Accounting of the Islamic University of Indonesia, Yogyakarta. He obtained his master’s and doctoral degrees in forensic accounting at the University of Wollongong, Australia.