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Two Romanian citizens sentenced to two years for ATM skimming
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Guilty: Two Romanian citizens, Ion Labanji, 40, and Iurie Vabrie, 37, attend their trial at the Denpasar District Court on March 22. They were sentenced to two years in prison over an ATM skimming case. (JP/Zul Trio Anggono)
T
he Denpasar District Court sentenced two Romanian nationals on Thursday, Ion Labanji, 40, and Iurie Vabrie, 37, to two years in prison over an ATM skimming case.
The sentence was lighter than the three-year prison sentence sought by the prosecutors. The two defendants were also ordered to pay Rp 1 billion (US$72,600) in fines, or face an additional two months' imprisonment.
The court's panel of judges declared that both Labanji and Vabrie were guilty of committing ATM skimming in Bali; Mataram, West Nusa Tenggara; and Surabaya, East Java. The defendants were guilty of violating Article 46 (3) of the current Electronic Information and Transactions (ITE) Law.
"The defendants' action have caused state-lender BNI [Bank Negara Indonesia] to suffer from financial losses," said presiding judge I Gusti Ngurah Partha Bargawa.
The panel of judges also considered some mitigating factors, such as their behavior, which according to the judges, was polite during the trial. The defendants are the breadwinners of their families and they feel remorse for their act, the judges said.
The defendants said they accepted their sentence and would not appeal.
Labanji and Vabrie were arrested in August 2017 in Surabaya by the Cyber Crime Unit of the National Police's Criminal Investigation Department (Bareskrim). Both suspects are members of an international syndicate. They committed their crimes by installing skimming equipment in several ATM machines in Bali, Mataram and Surabaya.
They later duplicated the information onto new cards and use them to take cash from some ATM machines. BNI suffered more than Rp 424.45 million in losses. (ebf)
