2,500 pirated porn videos confiscated
JAKARTA (JP): Police said yesterday they seized 2,489 pirated pornographic video cassettes and arrested four people in a raid at the Roxy Mas shopping and office center on Wednesday afternoon.
At 3 p.m. the police stormed a room on the fourth floor of the Blok E2 No. 26 building, where they caught four persons red- handed copying pornographic videos cassettes.
"The first and third floors of the building are empty, while the second floor is used an office. When we went up to check the fourth floor, we found four people copying pornographic video cassettes," Maj. Charles Marpaung, the chief of detectives for the Central Jakarta police precinct, told reporters.
The four were identified as Bong Seng Nyang, alias Beni, 21; Bong Sie Tian, 20; David Chandra, 30, and Joni Wiraputra, alias Aseng, 30.
Aseng, who lives in a mansion on Jl. Jamblang Raya, West Jakarta, has been identified as the owner of the copying apparatus. The rest of the suspects were working as technicians.
Aside from the pornographic video cassettes, police also seized a Sony television set, 46 video cassette copying machines, two video recorders, and eight packages of pornographic photographs, which were to be used for video cassette covers.
Among the seized video cassettes were films entitled Sex Holiday, E.X., Closest Encounter of the Most Intimate Kinds, Porn Birds, Sex in High School, My Sweet Gigolo, Monaco Falcon and Spreading Joy. All feature Western and Chinese stars.
Aseng told police he had been pirating pornographic cassettes for six months and had distributed them to video rental shops across Java.
"I was tempted to do the business in search of a big profit," Aseng was quoted by Maj. Charles Marpaung as saying during interrogation.
The chief of detectives attributed the success of the raid to a tip called in to the police about "suspicious trucks loaded with video cassettes every night" parking in front of the building.
The suspects, if found guilty, can be sentenced to a maximum of five years imprisonment, or ordered to pay a fine of up to Rp 50 million (US$23,290) for violating the 1992 cinematography law, which forbids distribution of uncensored pictures. (jsk)