Credit card criminals get four years in jail
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.