All Unlicensed Money Making Applications

Photo Illustration By Andry Winarko

JAKARTA The name Simonida Media suddenly became public attention around the end of 2023. The investment platform is suspected of carrying out scam practices, aka fraud which caused many people to suffer losses, even up to trillions of rupiah.

While running his business, Simonida Media allegedly implemented a ponzi scheme under the guise of a dollar fraudulent investment that promises huge profits to attract members. Broadly speaking, someone who wants to join Simonida Media must buy membership with a certain nominal and recruit other members if they want to make a profit.

Spokesperson for the Ministry of Communication and Information, Dedy Permadi, emphasized that his party had never given permission to application providers who declared themselves as money-making applications, either like Simonida Media or other applications.

However, he continued, special supervision is usually carried out by the Financial Services Authority (OJK) which has the authority to oversee the course of financial transactions. If there is a report, Kominfo will block the page from the company concerned. If it's a matter of whether, Kominfo must coordinate with Google," said Dedy.

"Actually, Kominfo has one mechanism for coordination across ministries or institutions related to determining the legality of an apk. Usually, in this case the OJK and the Investment Alert Task Force send a letter to the Ministry of Communication and Informatics to terminate access to the public regarding electronic transactions that violate the law," he continued.

He admitted that investment began to be loved by the public along with the increase in investment media that could be chosen. Many new companies have emerged by offering various types of investment products to the public. Unfortunately, public awareness of investing is not accompanied by accuracy and accuracy in choosing investment products.

Therefore, fraud under the guise of investment that promises a large income still steals the hearts of the Indonesian people. In addition, the perpetrators always innovate in wrapping and packing businesses that generally use Ponzi schemes.

They always managed to convince the public by promising big money in a relatively short time. Instead of making a profit, they are even trapped and become victims of fraud," said Dedy.

He explained that actually the public can find out the general characteristics of an investment that applies the Ponzi scheme, namely that participants are required to pay the initial membership fee and do the task by pressing the like button on each video or other.

This application will pay the profits after the participants have finished doing their duties by sending proof of screenshots to the application. There are several levels to determine the amount of profit obtained. The increase in level is obtained by paying some money to the application and to other members.

With this scheme, many people are interested in registering and becoming members in the hope that they will get big profits. However, this needs to be watched out for because the business process being carried out is not clear. No products are sold to be used as the main source of income but only rely on money to rotate between members," said Dedy.

Data From Simonida Owners Is Known By The Task Force

The Director General of Informatics Applications, Semuel Abrijani Pangerapan, who was contacted by VOI regarding this case stated a fraudulent investment case involving Simonida Media. Previously, he answered that he had not received a report. Later inFORmating again, Kominfo has received a report on the case of Simonido Media, and his party has forwarded the report, CoFTRA. And monitoring has been carried out by the Pasti Task Force. He added that the entity has been closed by the OJK according to a press release dated December 30, 2023.

Samuel added, according to his written answer to VOI, that the results of the investigation by the Task Force Pasti the company was known to have legality in the form of an establishment certificate, AHU, NIB, NPWP. The management is known to be Dian Purnama as the Director of PT Simonida Media Corp. His party promised that the TASK FORCE would act quickly in handling illegal investments, especially in the case of Simonida Media.

Credit Card Expert and Finance Consultant, who is also a watcher of the Money Games case, Roy Shakti said companies like Simonida have many forms. The mode is that they usually take in inactive companies and use them for scams. Before the company was taken, the scam actors had observed and followed suit. For example, Mersk's ponzi, which is known as a forwarding company in ports, they seem to be in the rental business for containers even though the content is not there.

How to check a fraudulent investment company or not, Roy explained, can be traced from the activity of chat applications between members at the company. If there is information from one member who complains or protests to the company, because he has manipulated an area. According to Roy, the weakness in handling cases like this, usually it is stuck when it is known that the server is abroad,

"The police can't do anything, if the server is abroad. Several cases can be handled if the server is in Indonesia, such as the Robot Trading case," said Roy, who was met by Voi in the Manggarai area, last January 3.

Cara mengetahui keberadaan server di luar negeri, dengan Google Trend. Seperti dalam kasus Simonida diketahui penaksesnya terbesarnya berasal dari Indonesia dan hanya satu persen yang berada di Cambodia. Artinya, server Simonida Media ini berada di Cambodia.