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| AsiaViews, Edition: 45/VI/February2010 |
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| Transnational thieves |
| The ATM fraud ring in Bali is believed to share the same network and boss with the group of Alex Rusli, who was seized last year and is now on trial. This is only ordinary theft rather than cybercrime. |
SITTING as a witness, Suwandojo, 55, was staring at nine defendants charged with illegal fund transfers through the ATMs of Bank Central Asia. On Wednesday last week, in the West Jakarta District Court, he revealed that his money was suddenly gone from his account. He was aware of the loss on August 31, 2009, when was about to withdraw cash from an ATM at the Citra 2 housing complex, West Jakarta. His transaction failed as his ATM card turned out to be blocked by the bank.
Suwandojo contacted a BCA call center officer and was suggested to replace his PIN. With his new PIN, his card could again be used. “I checked my account balance and my money turned out to have decreased by over Rp100 million,” said the BCA customer since 2006. In fact, he had not withdrawn that much before. His ATM card did not change hands either. “Neither do I know them,” he added, turning to the defendants.
The bank then printed the transactions of Suwandojo’s account. It showed 24 withdrawals on August 28 and 29, 2009, which were not made by the card holder. Around the same date, some 500 BCA customers experienced the same fate. They thronged the bank to lodge complaints. Until August 31, customers’ savings of about Rp700 million were stolen. “On that day BCA reported the case to the Jakarta Metro Police,” Metro Police chief spokesman Sr. Comr. Boy Rafli Amar told Tempo at his office last Wednesday.
In less than a month the police caught nine members of the ATM theft ring. Initially the police seized Sukirman who was withdrawing money from an ATM in Kampung Gusti, Penjaringan, North Jakarta, on September 22. Later the police captured Aseng alias Yusuarno at his home in Jelambar, West Jakarta.
Through Aseng the others were identified and the police successively arrested Yucuardi, Hendro Basuki, Alex Rusli, Martin Setiawan, Budi Syahputra, Roni Wijaya, and Diana Susana. “They said the leader was Alex Rusli,” said Boy.
The Alex group’s attorney, H.M. Naspudin, denied that his client was behind the criminal action. “The masterminds are in Australia and Canada,” he said to Tempo. He also claimed his client did not know the perpetrators of ATM fraud in Bali and several other places in January. His reason was that when caught in September 2009, all the equipment for ATM skimming had been confiscated.
According to a Tempo source, the Alex group and that committing theft in Bali are two teams sharing the same network and boss. It’s this boss who has supplied and taught them how to use skimming devices or magnetic card data readers and surveillance cameras. “The boss lives in Toronto, Canada,” he said.
Police Brigadier Huntal Sibarani said in his court testimony when Aseng was captured along with Yucuardi, the police seized evidence in the form of 60 fake ATM cards without bank logos or names. Each card had its PIN. “They claimed to have received the cards from Alex Rusli and Hendra,” Huntal explained.
The police moved on to Jalan Latumenten, West Jakarta. This time their target was Hendra. The police were fortunate to find Alex along with Hendra waiting for payments from the ATM “clean-up.” On the same day, the police caught Hendra, Alex and accomplices.
From the arrest, continued Huntal, the police seized evidence including banknote counting machines, skimmers or data readers, netbooks, fake ATM cards, and Rp200 million in money. “It’s entirely from BCA accounts,” he noted.
The pieces of evidence and Alex’s confessions, said Huntal, unveiled other overseas perpetrators, who analyzed data from the skimmers delivered by Alex. After being processed, the data were sent back to Alex in the form of account and PIN numbers. “Alex entered the data into counterfeit ATM cards,” added Huntal. With these duplicates Alex’s ring members cleaned up ATM funds including that in Suwandojo’s account.
Boy did not deny the involvement of foreigners in the Alex team. “There are Ming Ming and Edward in Australia and Val in Canada,” he said. Now the police are chasing them with Interpol assistance. But Boy could not yet ascertain if the ATM fraud in Bali was part of Alex’s action. Yet he confirmed their similarity in mode, both using skimmers and withdrawing most of the money abroad.
Deputy CEO of PT Bank Central Asia, Jahja Setiaatmadja, in his statement at Bank Indonesia affirmed that 90 percent of around Rp5 billion stolen from customers in Bali was withdrawn from Australia. In the case of theft taking place in 2009, considerable funds were derived from Toronto, Canada. “We refund all the customers’ funds lost,” he said.
Regarding a likely Russian network, Boy suspected it could be that of Val, who has two citizenships: Russian and Canadian. The info on the Russian ring has kept the Honorary Consul of Russia in Bali, Nuku Kamka, busy. He was among those questioned by Bali Police about the presence of Russians on the island, whose number has indeed been rising. “None of them is likely to be involved in this case,” he maintained.
The police suspicion in Bali is fairly logical. The investigation is leading to Russian thieves, whose victims are in Bali, and Russian tourists happen to be growing in number there—among others marked by the appearance of special Russian-language restaurants. However, this gives no guarantee that the mastermind is in Bali.
Vedanta Wijaya, the owner of Slavyanka, a Russian eatery in Bali, said he had no idea of any Russian group defrauding ATMs of their funds. Nor could he recall if there had been suspicious visitors. “They could be among the large number of guests,” he added.
An investigator who asked not to be identified said Alex got acquainted with Ming Ming and Edward when he lived in Australia. According to him, they designed the crime and taught Alex how to steal data from ATM cards. Then Alex formed a team. “Alex’s members were workers while Alex was a businessman,” he said.
The investigator added that Alex fitted skimmers on ATM card slots using double-sided adhesive tape. A skimmer has the capacity of recording data from 50 ATM cards in six hours. The data skimmers always work along with button-sized spy cameras that face keypads. These cameras operate automatically as ATM cards are inserted and stop working as the cards are pulled out. “All the instruments can be bought in Jakarta, costing Rp5 million to Rp15 million,” he pointed out.
Later, Alex transferred data from skimmers to netbooks. As he could not read the data, Alex sent them to his partners in Australia via Skype—video call as well as data transfer facilities—for processing. The processed data, as indicated by the investigator, were apparently not fully returned to Alex. “So, if Alex sent data from 1,000 ATM cards, for example, only 700 would be sent back,” he said.
That’s why, in his view, money could be stolen from other countries through joint ATMs like Cirus or Alto, having connections with BCA. As proof, he assured, the value of loot originally reported by the bank at Rp700 million, recently swelled to almost Rp6 billion. Perpetrators, he said, did not aim at certain banks. “Their targets are the types of ATMs where skimmers can be utilized,” he concluded.
The ATM fraud committed by the group of Alex, according to Ruby Alamsyah, a digital forensic expert, doesn’t belong to the category of cybercrime. It’s because Alex made no entry into the bank’s system. “It’s only ordinary theft with skimmers, but the action is transnational,” he said.
It is for this reason that the public prosecutor is applying Article 263 of the Criminal Code on counterfeiting and Article 362 on theft to Alex and his eight fellow defendants. “They are liable to maximum imprisonment of six years,” said prosecutor Djumadi. |
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| By Anne L. Handayani, Sutarto |
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| Tempo, No. 23/XI/03-09 February 2010 |
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