Three arrested for offering fake diplomas

The city police’s cyber crime unit revealed on Tuesday that they arrested three suspects earlier this month for allegedly offering an online document forgery service.

Unit head Adj. Sr. Comr. Audie Latuheru said that the three suspects had offered the service through the website ijazahaspal.com. He said that, although the service mainly focused on satisfying the requests of job seekers to have instant graduation certificates, the suspects also catered to other requests, including the creation of fake bank account passbooks.

diploma fraud

“The three suspects, identified as YS, IS, and AB, had been doing this since early 2011. We found they have created over 150 fake graduation certificates, including high school, three-year diploma programs and university degrees.”

A fake high-school diploma would cost a customer Rp 4 million (US$432). A fake three-year diploma degree was priced at Rp 5 million, while a university degree was Rp 6 million.

Among the fake documents displayed by the police were several fake National University of Singapore (NUS) diplomas. “It seems that these guys could cater for any forgery request you could come up with. They could forge fake certificates for any high school or university, whether local or international,” Audie said.

Police spokesman Sr. Comr. Rikwanto said the investigation began when detectives stumbled upon the website when searching the Internet for information on diploma forgery on April 2.

“Detectives found a cell phone number on the website and contacted it, asking for an explanation about the service. After a series of correspondence, we found out on May 11 that the number belonged to YS, who lives in Tulungagung, East Java,” he explained.

The police arrested YS on the same day. Following questioning, the police arrested IS and AB in Central Jakarta on April 3. They also confiscated several laptops, cell phones, ATM cards and bank account passbooks, fake graduation certificates and Rp 6.5 million in cash as evidence.

“We found that YS was the one who accepted the orders, negotiated the deals and designed the fake diplomas,” Audie said. “YS would send a soft copy of the design to IS through email. IS would print it and send it to the customer.”

If an order required an embossed logo or a hologram sticker, AB would be contacted.

All three suspects have been charged with document forgery under the Criminal Code and may have to spend up to eight years in prison if found guilty.

Source : thejakartapost