Credit card criminals get four years in jail
Yuli Tri Suwarni, The Jakarta Post/Bandung
A judge at the Bandung District Court sentenced on Tuesday two men, one of them a repeat offender, to four years in prison for credit card fraud.
In the previous court session three weeks ago, the prosecutor recommended the district court sentence the two defendants, Frans Harry Theosa, 47 and Arief Rusmawan, 37, to four years in prison for their crimes.
The two defendants were arrested in May this year after they completed a transaction in a garage sale shop Rangkas on Jl. Karapitan, Bandung city. At first, the transaction proceeded smoothly and they spent a total of Rp 7 million (US$744.7) in two separate transactions. But the cashier found an irregularity in the bank's identity number in the two cards submitted by the two customers.
The two cards were Citibank cards, but when the cashier rubbed the card, the computer showed that the cards belonged to an overseas bank.
The cashier contacted the police immediately and police officers arrested the two credit card criminals.
After police investigation, it was revealed that Herry, a Tangerang resident, was not a novice. He had been sentenced to five months in prison a few years ago in Tangerang for a similar crime.
In an earlier trial session, both defendants confessed that they bought the bogus credit card from a person named Aseng, 45, who is now a fugitive, at Rp 5 million (US$532) for three credit cards. The credit cards could be used to shop with a purchase limit of Rp 30 million (US$3,191) each.
Despite the confession, the judge still imposed the sentence on the two defendants.
Meanwhile, Mu'in Fikri, the coordinator of West Java's Credit Card Association, explained credit card fraud is done. "The criminal, posing as a shopkeeper, rubs the card while the customer is inattentive, and at the same time the shopkeeper uses a credit card imprinter machine to copy data in the genuine credit card to the machine and saves the data in it. He or she later shifts the data from the imprinter to a bogus credit card and uses it to deceive supermarkets or shops," said Mu'in, who is also head of Bank BNI's Credit Card Center's Bandung branch.
He welcomed the stiff punishment handed down on the two defendants, saying that the sentence could serve as a deterrent for other credit card criminals.
He also called on credit card holders to be vigilant, as he estimated that out of five million credit card users in Indonesia, some 3,000 credit cards have been defrauded.
The Indonesian Credit Card Association estimated that credit card fraud cost credit card users in the country between Rp 40 to 60 billion last year.