Cirebon Police Reveals Fictitious Deposit Mode Fraud

CIREBON - Cirebon City Resort Police (Polres), West Java, revealed a case of fraud and embezzlement of customer funds using the mode of making fictitious deposit accounts, carried out by private bank employees with the initials AY in the area.

"We are following up on public reports that there has been this case since March 2023. The perpetrator with the initials AY has harmed a number of customers to a total of more than Rp230 million," said Head of the Criminal Investigation Unit (Kasatreskrim) of the Cirebon City Police AKP Anggi Eko Prasetyo as reported by ANTARA, Wednesday, November 14.

He explained that AY, who works as a marketing worker at a bank in Cirebon, offers new deposit programs to customers with a higher promise of returns.

After the customer is interested, he said, the perpetrator asks customers to transfer funds through the digital banking application.

"In carrying out the action, suspect AY asked for permission to access the customer's digital banking application on the grounds of helping the transaction process," he said.

Anggi said that after obtaining access, including passwords and PIN codes, the perpetrator then transferred customer funds to his personal account under the pretext that the money had been entered into a deposit account.

He said that this action was only exposed when the customers felt suspicious, because they did not get proof of ownership of a deposit account, so they went to the bank office to ask for clarification.

The bank, said Kasatreskrim, then confirmed that there was no deposit account in the customer's name.

"From this action, there were eight victims who were harmed materially," he said.

Anggi emphasized that the suspect is now charged with Article 49 of Law Number 10 of 1998 concerning Banking, as well as Articles 378 and 372 of the Criminal Code concerning Fraud and Embezzlement with a maximum penalty of 8 years.

"The reason the suspect took this action is not only for personal gain, the perpetrator used the funds for online gambling," he said.

Disclosure of this case is emphasized as a reminder for the public to be more careful in transactions and not to provide access to banking data to any party.

"We will continue to develop this case to gather further evidence and ensure there are no other victims," he said.