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Dozens of foreigners arrested for email scam
The National Police arrested on Thursday 25 foreigners and three Indonesian women for their involvement in an alleged email scam worth billions of rupiah
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T
he National Police arrested on Thursday 25 foreigners and three Indonesian women for their involvement in an alleged email scam worth billions of rupiah.
National Police chief Comr. Gen. Sutarman said the suspects had fraudulently amassed around Rp 30 billion (US$2.67 million) from their victims in Indonesia and overseas.
'We have to keep tabs on foreigners living in Indonesia who are intending to perpetrate crimes like this. They hijacked people's email accounts in Indonesia and other countries,' he said at National Police headquarters in South Jakarta.
The police's special economic crimes personnel detained the 28 suspects at the Kelapa Gading Apartments in North Jakarta. They also confiscated a number of laptops and transaction documents.
National Police special economic crimes director Brig. Gen. Arief Sulistyanto said the police made the arrests after studying reports filed by two victims, an Indonesian and a Belgian businessman. 'The suspects intercepted the victims' email correspondence. 'Victim A' assumed he was communicating with someone he knew, while in fact it was one of the suspects. 'Victim B' had the same experience,' Arief said.
The fraud gang successfully lured one of the victims to wire Rp 4 billion to their bank account.
Arief said the group owned several bank accounts, which were managed by the three Indonesian women. 'The women established the bank accounts and transferred the money [to their accomplices],' he said.
Prior to these arrests, the police had detained five other foreigners linked to the 28 suspects.
All 35 will be charged under the 2008 Information and Electronic Transactions (ITE) Law and the 2002 Money Laundering Law.
The police are working with the Law and Human Rights Ministry's immigration directorate general to confirm the nationality and immigration status of the suspects.
In August, the National Police and Jakarta Police cracked five cases of Internet-based, transnational financial crime worth over Rp 10 billion.
One of the cases involved Senegal-based trading company Tall Fall and Chinese food exporter Jinxiang County.
Tall Fall received a message from a fake Jinxiang email account, requesting the company transfer
Rp 2.2 billion to a Bank Tabungan Negara (BTN) account in the name of Foshan Zebro Ltd.
The police, in cooperation with the Financial Transaction Reports and Analysis Centre (PPATK), froze the bank account before the perpetrators could withdraw the money.
