Bank Riau Kepri Employees Become Suspects, 2 Years Breaking Billions Of Rupiah Customer Funds And Used For Online Gambling

BRK Building in Pekanbaru/ANTARA

PEKANBARU - Riau Police detained RP, an employee of Bank Riau Kepri (BRK), after being a suspect in misappropriating hundreds of customers' funds worth billions of rupiah in 2 years to gamble online.

The Head of Public Relations of the Riau Police, Kombes Sunarto, explained that the incident began when the Customer Service (CS) of Bank BRK Pasir Pangaraian Branch was contacted by the perpetrators to request assistance in opening a doorman savings account in the name of a customer on 17 June.

A day later, CS found out that a money withdrawal transaction had taken place using an ATM card. In fact, the customer does not have an ATM card.

"On June 21, 2022, the quality assurance staff of BRK Pasir Pangaraian learned that there was a withdrawal using an ATM card in Gaddaffi's name," said Sunarto in Pekanbaru, Antara, Tuesday, June 28.

Based on these findings, the man with the initials RP was reported and investigated by the Riau Police Criminal Investigation Unit II Sub-Directorate. RP, who is a permanent employee at a bank owned by the Riau Provincial Government, was finally named a suspect. RP is suspected of breaking into customer funds using an ATM card at BRK Pekanbaru Branch between 2020-2022.

Sunarto revealed that RP was known to have burglarized the account funds belonging to 101 customers at Bank BRK whose value was billions of rupiah. "The money from the break-in was used by RP to play online gambling," said Sunarto.

Currently the police are continuing to investigate further regarding the involvement of other perpetrators. "We are still exploring whether this RP works alone or if there are other actors involved. It is possible that there will be new actors in this case," he concluded.

For his actions, the suspect was charged with Article 49 paragraph (1) letter a jo. paragraph (2) letter b of the Republic of Indonesia Law Number 10 of 1998 concerning Amendments to the Republic of Indonesia Law Number 7 of 1992 concerning Banking, with a minimum penalty of 3 years in prison and a maximum of 15 years in prison, as well as a minimum fine of IDR 5 billion and a maximum of IDR 200 billion.

This is not the first time that Bank BRK employees have burglarized customer money. Previously, in 2021 at Bank BRK Rokan Hulu Branch, two suspects were also charged with the same case. One of them is a woman with the initials NH (37) as a bank teller and AS (42) a former Head Teller or Service Section Leader.

The mode used by the suspects was NH as the teller writing and imitating the customer's signature in the withdrawal slip form so that he could withdraw cash from the customer's account.

The suspect AS as the Head Teller provided a user id along with a password so that the suspect NH could make withdrawal transactions from the customer's account. Their actions cost customers around Rp. 1.4 billion.