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Mom’s OK: Police Bust SMS Scam Ring
Zaky Pawas | August 23, 2011

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Serigala-Berbulu-Domba
11:09pm Aug 23, 2011

I find that a response to these type of requests using some 'rich Anglo Saxon language' to be a fairly effective measure for cutting such communications off at the pass.

BilboBaggins
9:44pm Aug 23, 2011

I have had many such sms's over a long period of time but you really would have to be pretty dim to actually send them some pulsa.

I sometimes reply though with " OK sebentar ya, lagi kirim pulsa"

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Police in Jakarta have arrested 10 people believed to be running a text message scam to defraud unsuspecting cellphone users.

Sr. Comr. Gatot Edy Pramono, the Jakarta Police chief of detectives, said on Monday that the suspects were arrested during an 11-day period from Aug. 8-19 in Jakarta, West Java and Central Java. Police are still on the trail of another six.

“Their modus operandi was to send out text messages to random numbers, claiming that one of the recipient’s family members was ill or in an accident, and that they should transfer money immediately for their treatment,” Gatot said.

He said the series of arrests began with the capture of a suspect, identified only as R.A., 44, in Purwokerto, Central Java.

The authorities there handed the suspect over to Jakarta Police. He then confessed to having defrauded several people in that fashion.

From his testimony, police arrested nine others, including one woman, and seized 260 ATM cards, 73 ID cards registered to the suspects, 11 cellphones and a computer.

“From our investigation, we believe the suspects carried out scams in at least 20 places, including Jakarta, Bandung and Balikpapan [East Kalimantan],” Gatot said.

He added that they were believed to have operated for the past five years, with one of the suspects’ bank accounts showing transfers of unusually large amounts of money from at least 25 possible victims.

“The total amount that they managed to scam during this period was around Rp 230 million [$27,000],” he said.

The scam, though well-known among Jakarta residents, proved lucrative in many cases, Gatot said.

“After they sent out the text message, some of the recipients would call back to the number,” he said.

“The perpetrator would then pretend to hand the phone over to a doctor, who was in fact just one of their accomplices, who would describe the nature of the supposed injuries and quote a cost for the treatment.”

The perpetrators would then get the victims to transfer money to one of their many bank accounts, relying on the victims’ state of panic to cloud their judgement.

“In one case, the victim transferred Rp 45 million,” he said. “In most cases, the perpetrators got at least Rp 1.5 million.”

Gatot said police were now looking into the possibility that the perpetrators might have been acquainted with some of the scam victims.

The syndicate is also believed to have run a different type of scam, in which members sent out text messages informing the recipients that they had won a prize and asking them to pay an administrative fee before they could redeem it.

Sr. Comr. Baharudin Djafar, the Jakarta Police spokesman, called on the public not to fall for such scams.

“Always cross-check with your children or other relatives who they claim are in hospital, or get your friends to check on them,” he said.