Two Turkish nationals are facing six years in prison each over an alleged skimming attempt in Bali, after police arrested them last month.
Police said that the suspects, identified as CY and MB, were apprehended on Nov. 22 after a brief attempt to evade arrest.
“Their modus operandi involved installing skimming tools in the form of routers on ATM machines and attaching a hidden camera on top of the keypad portion,” Ary Satryan, who heads the general crimes unit at the Bali Police, said in a statement issued today.
Police said the case began following some issues with an ATM machine in Badung regency, after which bank staff found that the lock of the machine had been damaged, and a router was found inside.
CCTV recording showed two people riding on a motorbike on Nov. 19 before entering the ATM vestibule and then dismantling the lock attached to the ATM machine, before proceeding to attach the router and connect it to the modem. The recordings basically caught them in the act, which led to an official investigation by the police.
“The machine is from [South] Korea, their middleman is now being pursued, we got their name already. These Turkish suspects are new to Bali, every time they take it’s around tens of millions, and they change their clothes whenever they act,” Ary said.
The foreigners are charged with articles under Indonesia’s Information and Electronic Transactions Law (UU ITE), which carries a maximum sentence of six years in prison.
