Bank teller arrested for fraud

Abdul Khalik, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

A bank is supposed to as safe as it gets, a place to which customers can hand over their money and valuables, and still sleep easy at night.

But a customer of Bank Danamon's Sabang branch in Central Jakarta recently lost US$3,000 from her account, believed to have been withdrawn by a bank employee who forged the customer's signature and gave her accomplice a copy of the customer's identity card.

The suspect, identified as SAS, 30, was arrested on Saturday after nervousness on the part of her accomplice alerted bank security, who foiled their plan to withdraw $9,000 from another customer's account.

The Jakarta Police's financial crimes unit chief Adj. Sr. Comr. Aris Munandar, revealed on Monday that the suspect had tried to fraudulently withdraw money from customer accounts three times, but had only been successful the first time.

"SAS falsified the signature of a customer, identified as Silvia Chandra, and used her ID. On Sept. 1, she drew up a power of attorney authorizing her accomplice, identified as Rusman, to withdraw $3,000 on Silvia's behalf from Danamon's Panglima Polim branch," he said.

The branch paid out the money.

On Sept. 29, SAS used the same modus operandi with a different accomplice. This time, however, she failed to get the $9,000 she intended to take from an account as her accomplice failed to show his own ID.

On Oct. 7, she tried to make another withdrawal of $9,000 from the Panglima Polim branch but security officers became suspicious as her accomplice appeared excessively nervous.

"The bank then verified everything and found out that the power of attorney and signature were fake. The accomplice gave the name of the suspect and where to find her. Security detained the accomplice and we took her to the police station," said Aris.

Police arrested SAS on Saturday at her home in Utan Kayu Selatan, Matraman, East Jakarta.

Aris said that SAS would be charged under the banking and money laundering legislation, as well as under Article 378 of the Criminal Code on fraud, and was looking at a maximum punishment of 10 years in jail if convicted.

"SAS was able to elude detection for some time as the account holder had not checked her account for some time. Had she checked her account regularly, she would have found out sooner that somebody was taking her money," Aris said.