Bareskrim Reveals Syndicate Of Breaking Into Bank And Grab Customer Accounts

Bank fraud and Grab press conference (Rizky Adytia Pramana / VOI)

JAKARTA - The Criminal Investigation Unit of the National Police has revealed a syndicate of burglary accounts of bank customers and online transportation applications. Based on the disclosure results, this syndicate made a profit of IDR 21 billion from the thousands of accounts compromised.

Head of Public Relations Division of the National Police, Inspector General Argo Yuwono, said that from the syndicate's disclosure, 10 people were named as suspects. They include, AY (19), YL (25), GS (26), J (50), K (53) and RP (18), KS (28), CP (27), AH (34) and PA (38).

"The point is that they have reported losses of around Rp21 billion," Argo told reporters, Monday, October 5.

The disclosure of the syndicate that broke into bank accounts began when there was a police report from the Grab community and company in June. Then, the report was followed up and succeeded in arresting the suspects.

From the results of the investigation, the perpetrators were detected in different locations. However, most of them are located around Palembang, Sumatra.

"There were 3 locations found by investigators. The perpetrators were in the Luwung Gajah area, then Tulung Selapan and were in Palembang," he said.

In fact, from the results of the investigation of the suspects, they managed to break into 3,070 bank customer accounts since 2017. So that the total they got was around IDR 19 billion. Meanwhile, the rest was obtained from hacking into a Grab account.

"(Losses) Grab Rp2 billion. The rest is banking," he said.

In the act of breaching customer accounts, the perpetrators use the mode of contacting the customer. They pretend to be bank employees and ask customers to give their account passwords.

"It was as if the perpetrator was from the bank so they could update the system and others. So he called the bank customer unaware of giving the password. After that everything could be broken into," said Argo.

Furthermore, some of the proceeds of crime have been used by the suspects. They use the money to meet personal needs. Some of them even used the money to buy cars and houses.

"The amount of money that has been used by the suspects is Rp. 8 billion," he said.

For their actions, the suspects were subject to Article 30 paragraph 1 in conjunction with Article 46 paragraph 1 and Article 32 in conjunction with Article 8 of the ITE Law and Article 363 of the Criminal Code. The suspects face up to 10 years in prison.