International Syndicate Of COVID-19 Rapid Test Fraud, Brain Of The Perpetrators Of Nigerian Citizens

Press conference on the international syndicate case of COVID-19 rapid test fraud (Photo: Antara)

JAKARTA - National Police Criminal Investigation Investigators stated that Nigerian citizen Udeze Celestine Nnaemeka alias Emeka, who was the main perpetrator of the IDR276 billion COVID-19 rapid test kit fraud, controlled his crime from the Serang Detention Center (Rutan), Banten.

"It is currently known that Emeka is in the Serang Detention Center, Banten, for being involved in a fraud case," said the Director of Special Economic Crimes at the National Police Criminal Investigation Unit, Brigadier General Helmy Santika in Jakarta, as reported by Antara, Thursday, December 17.

Helmy said that the investigators from the Directorate of Criminal and Criminal Investigation of the National Police moved quickly to dismantle the international fraud network using the Business Email Compromise (BEC) mode with a loss of hundreds of billions of rupiah.

The disclosure takes relatively fast time or a month in cases of fraud related to medical devices for COVID-19 with victims who are citizens of several countries, namely Italy, Germany and the Netherlands, as well as in cases of transfers of funds and investments with victims of Argentinean and Greek citizens with total loss value of IDR 276 billion.

"The case started on November 3. At that time, the Indonesian Police's Hubinter Division received information from the Dutch Interpol regarding the BEC operandi case in Indonesia from 2018 to 2020," said Helmy.

In this case, the National Police arrested the suspect Dani who was in charge of taking foreign currency funds and Hafiz who was in charge of making fictitious documents and pretending to be the director of the company.

Apart from the two suspects, the police also declared two Indonesian citizens, namely Herman and Nurul alias Iren, as fugitives because they helped the fraud.

Helmy said the suspects had committed the crime by sending fake e-mails informing about the change in the company's account number related to the purchase of the COVID-19 rapid test that had been ordered by a Dutch company, which was valued at US $ 3,597,875 or IDR 52.3 billion. requested to be sent to the suspect's fictitious company, CV SD Biosensor Inc.

So far, said Helmy, his party had uncovered five cases of international fraud in the business e-mail mode by the Nigerian foreigner conspiracy. Three of them were related to COVID-19, while two were related to transfers of funds and investments.

"For cases in the Netherlands, we received a report in early November and immediately carried out an investigation and it was successfully resolved," said the one-star general.

According to him, the total losses incurred by the suspects reached IDR276 billion. However, Bareskrim Polri confiscated Rp.141.6 billion in cash.

From the proceeds of the crime, the suspects took advantage of the proceeds of their crimes by buying foreign currency, assets, land, cars and houses.

For their actions, the suspects are charged under Article 56 of the Criminal Code and Article 3 and / or Article 4 and / or Article 5 and / or Article 6 and / or Article 10 of Law Number 8 Year 2010 concerning the Prevention and Eradication of the Crime of Money Laundering on Insurance.