You can never be too careful of ATM scammers and thefts in Indonesia, but what one woman experienced in Medan may be a new kind of mysterious scam that nobody has heard of before.
Mariyani, a 54-year-old coffee seller from Medan, yesterday lost Rp 16.5 million from her bank account after a strange transaction at an ATM in a petrol station in Medan.
“I wanted to fill up the petrol, so I went to take out Rp 100,000 first. But when I entered my PIN number, the ATM showed ‘error’. My card was stuck inside, but there was a man there and he told me to press enter,” Mariyani said, as quoted by Warta Kota.
She added the man told her to wait for five minutes for her card to come out. Mariyani eventually pried the card out with a nail clipper she had in her purse.
“When the card came out, I tried again at the next ATM over. The man from before had disappeared. When I checked my balance, I wanted to cry, I had Rp 75,000 left. Rp 16.5 million was gone,” she said.
Mariyani said she had been saving that money up to take an Umrah pilgrimage for years.
Nobody knows who the man was, or if he was indeed responsible for Mariyani’s loss. The local police are currently investigating into the case.
