REPUBLIKA.CO.ID, JAKARTA -- The Jakarta police have uncovered a criminal syndicate comprising 59 Chinese and Taiwanese citizens involved in a "cyber fraud" in North Jakarta. "They were allegedly involved in extorting money from fellow countrymen in China and Taiwan," spokesman of the Jakarta Metropolitan Police Senior Commissioner Argo Yuwono stated here Tuesday.

He noted that the modus operandi of the syndicate involved the members introducing themselves as law enforcement agents who could stop investigating their cases in exchange for a sum of money. It is believed that they had collected the data of bank customers before contacting their targets in China and Taiwan, he remarked. "They demand money to halt the cases, while in reality, they are not law enforcers," he pointed out.

Yuwono stated that members of the Jakarta Metropolitan Police, led by Adjunct Senior Commissioner Aries Supriono, raided seven locations where the cybercrimes had been committed on Mar 9. The first location is a house on Jalan Manyar 4, Pantai Indah Kapuk in North Jakarta where they arrested 32 foreigners, including 27 men and four women.

The second location is a house on Jalan Manyar 7 that is believed to have been used as a transit place where they arrested two men and two women and from Hotel 88 in West Jakarta where the police took into custody 16 men and four women.

The police also arrested two men and two women from a house on Jalan Camar Elok V Number 20 and later two men and a woman at the Best Western Apartment. The police also raided a house in Kemang, South Jakarta, in connection with the case.

The police have confiscated savings account passbooks, public switched telephone network equipment, walkie-talkies, cell phones, documents in Chinese language, CCTVE decoders, and internet equipment from the suspects, Yuwono noted. He added that all suspects had been handed over to the immigration office for investigation regarding their immigration status.

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