Riau Islands Police Arrest 4 Bank Employees Who Steal Data, Customer Losses Reaches IDR 25 Billion

The press conference revealed a gang of theft of customer data that caused losses of tens of billions of rupiah. (ANTARA/Yude)

BATAM - Riau Islands Regional Police arrested four people who were part of a conspiracy to steal customer data with losses of more than IDR 25 billion.

Director of Special Criminal Investigation (Dirreskrimsus) of the Riau Islands Regional Police, Commissioner Nasriadi, said that the four perpetrators came from two large banks.

"From bank Y there is one suspect with the initials MI, with losses reaching IDR 13.2 billion. Then at bank X there are three suspects with the initials SQ, HS and KS, with losses reaching IDR 12.6 billion", he said in Batam, Riau Islands, Antara , Thursday, November 9.

He said that the four people were permanent employees. Their position at the bank is as customer service, then operator and marketing.

The four perpetrators had been carrying out their actions for one year. The method is to look for customers they know who don't have M-banking and SMS banking or mobile banking applications.

Then, when these customers wanted to ask for a change in the password number for their automated teller machine (ATM) card, or to update their data, that's where the suspects stole the data and money in the customer's account, without the customer knowing.

The money, he said, was transferred to holding accounts spread across several regions in Indonesia, which were also part of the gang of the four suspects.

"The owners of these accounts are everywhere. They are in Java, Sumatra and several other areas. We already know and are pursuing the account owners. This is a syndicate and we are continuing to develop it", he said.

This case started with a report from a customer who had home installments using autodebit. Then he suspected that there was a payment that was paid twice in one month.

"From that report, we then asked the banks for help to find out who could access this. From there we got these four people", he explained.

He admitted that he was still looking for the victims of the data theft and asked residents if anyone felt they had lost money like this case, immediately report it to the bank.

He also asked people who don't have the application to immediately download the application so they can detect the transactions being carried out. Then don't carelessly provide data to customer service.

"For this bank, I cannot reveal the name of the bank because it will cause panic later. But I appeal to all people who have savings in any bank, to check it immediately. So that their money is guaranteed from data theft", he said.