T

he city police'€™s cyber crimes unit has uncovered five cases related to cyberspace, in which the suspects used various tricks to lure victims, varying from an ex-girlfriend to a major bank.

The unit'€™s chief, Adj. Sr. Comr. Edy Suwandono, said in a press statement recently that in one of the cases, two suspects, identified only as AD and LB, hypnotized an owner of an online shop, Bambang Wuryanyo, resulting in the loss of Rp 56.4 million (US$4,820).

'€œThe suspects pretended to buy electric equipment from Bambang'€™s online shop. They claimed that they had transferred a down payment, but they lied,'€ he said.

The suspects, he said, called Bambang in a teleconference, claiming that they were respectively a customer and an officer of a bank'€™s call center.

LB, who claimed to be the call center officer, reportedly instructed Bambang to transfer money to several accounts. Besides Bambang, the suspects also allegedly persuaded his wife and son to transfer money.

Edy said that in another case, two suspects accessed data of a bank'€™s customers and used it to deceive the bank'€™s call center. The police arrested the suspects after the bank, which was deceived several times, reported the cases to them. The bank suffered a total loss of Rp 72.5 million.

Another case involved five suspects '€” K, I, F, FF and DS '€” who reportedly hacked the email account of PT Dongan Kreasi Indonesia (DKI), a human hair wig manufacturer in Bekasi, West Java.

Edy explained that the suspects, using DKI'€™s email account, sent emails to two of its corporate customers in the United States and instructed them to transfer their next payments to new accounts, which belonged to the suspects. The fraud resulted in losses of $229,479 for DKI.

In another case, a suspect reportedly used a Skype account under the name of Peter Williams and instructed a broker named Kus to buy Indonesian gemstones worth $900,000 for him from Dina Rahayu Harjo. Kus was informed that a courier named Richard Anderson would deliver the cash to Dina.

Kus then received a call reportedly from Anderson, saying that the customs office at Soekarno-Hatta International Airport had prohibited him from bringing in the cash and advised Kus to bribe the customs officers and gave his phone to a woman claiming to be customs officer Fatmah Sarah. The woman asked Kus to transfer money to her and her bosses in installments so that Anderson would be allowed through customs with the cash.

Kus lost Rp 1.3 billion in the scam, while the woman claiming to be Fatmah, who was later identified only as RCH, received 10 percent every time Kus transferred money.

Edy said the police had arrested RCH and Nigerian citizen OSS and that they were still looking for Anderson and Dina.

In another case, a jilted ex-boyfriend, JH, hacked the Twitter account of PNA and uploaded a naked photo of her as a profile picture. JH also created a Facebook account and uploaded more naked photos of PNA. The photos were taken when they were still a couple.

Edy said that the police cyber crime unit, which was established in 2010, had traced the crimes by using a digital forensic laboratory provided by the Australian Federal Police earlier this year.

'€œThe lab helped us track down the criminals'€™ IP addresses even though we still needed to use several manual methods,'€ Edy said.

He said his unit had also cooperated with other parties, like banks and major online shops, to hunt down the suspects. In some cases tricky suspects used fake IP addresses, which led the police to a dead end.

Edy said that the number of cyber-crimes had increased this year. He did not specify the number of such crimes, but according to a police report, the Jakarta Police as of April had received more than 300 public reports on cyber-crimes. In 2012, the number of cyber-crime cases reached 253 cases. (nai)