Man arrested for phone battery scam

JAKARTA (JP): Police have arrested a man for allegedly producing and selling fake branded mobile phone batteries in Central Jakarta, an officer said on Wednesday.

Chief of the Central Jakarta Police Lt. Col. Iman Harjatna identified the suspect as Oei Antony, 32, a resident of Jl. Kartini Raya.

Antony was arrested last Thursday when police also confiscated hundreds of batteries bearing brandnames of Nokia, Motorola, Ericsson and Samsung.

"Earlier on May 27, we received information from an anonymous caller who said that a man, identified as Antony, committed the crimes," Iman said.

Plainclothes police were deployed to check on the tip.

Antony has two residences on Jl. Kartini Raya. One is his shop-house and the other was allegedly used as a factory for assembling the batteries from used ones.

Antony reportedly employed 34 people to make the fake batteries.

During preliminary questioning, Antony admitted he ran the business for a year because he lacked funds to import genuine batteries, Iman said. (emf)