In the past, the police only took action based on complaints filed by victims, but that is now changing as the number of people filing complaints rises.

The National Police have formed a task force with the Financial Services Authority (OJK), the government agency that regulates and oversees the operation of financial institutions in Indonesia. The agency has outlawed 14 sites offering peer-to-peer (P2P) lending online, but until recently, this has not helped the police in building a case against them.

The Investment Alert Task Force will speed up the processing of complaints received from people falling prey to and being abused by creditors because they have failed to repay their debts.

One of the recent cases that went viral was experienced by a woman, identified only as YI, 51, from Surakarta in Central Java. The woman found an advertisement naming her as willing to offer sexual services to enable her to pay back her loan from P2P lender InCash.

“I received an SMS from InCash that said they were offering flexible credit services. After you click the link on the text message, it would download content, ask personal details such as a full name, address, and bank account number, which is followed by a Yes or No homepage for the borrower to decide on his or her loan commitment,” YI said as reported by kompas.com last month.

However, even if the user selects no on the homepage, the money is still transferred by InCash to the borrower’s account number.

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