Some guys will go pretty far and do some pretty ugly things to get a date with a beautiful woman. One young man in the South Sumatran city of Palembang decided to deceive women by pretending to be a police officer in order to get them to go out with him, but now that his ploy has been revealed it looks like his next date will be with a court judge.
The police pretender was identified by the real police as 21-year-old Ari Septian Pratama. He was arrested yesterday by actual officers while he was at a hospital. He was even wearing his fake uniform at the time (reports did not mention why he had the bandage on his head).
Ari confessed to police that he had been impersonating an officer of the law for about one month. Using the fake uniform that he actually had custom tailored as well as a realistic looking toy gun, he went by the alias Julian Saputra and was bold enough to pretend to be the son of Southeast Sulawesi’s regional police chief and a doctor of police forensics to boot.
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After he was arrested, Ari was forced to explain his crime in front of the media at South Sumatra Regional Police Headquarters in Palembang. He told reporters that he had never used the fake police act to extract money from anybody including the women he dated.
However, he did admit to dating over ten women under his false police pretense, including civil servants, nurses, students, policewomen and doctors.
“I promised many (of the women I dated) that I would propose marriage to them. Honestly, I didn’t get money from them, but I slept with most of them. Some are even already engaged,” Ari said as quoted by Detik.
Unfortunately for Ari (but very fortunately for his potential future victims) one of the women he dated became suspicious and inquired with the real police to see if there was any officer with his name. There was not and police immediately went looking for “Julian Saputra”, leading to Ari’s yesterday’s arrest.
Ari claimed that he had done the entire deception after being challenged by a friend on Bigo Live who even gave him IDR5 million (US$345) to buy the uniform.
Police said they were still investigating the case, including two reports from alleged victims that Ari had actually used his fake persona to extort money from them at an ATM.
If found guilty, Ari would not be the first person in Indonesia to pretend to be a police officer for personal gain. In July, the Jakarta Police arrested a 20-year-old man who had been using a fake uniform to extort bribes from drivers in South Jakarta.
In 2015, a 61-year-old retired civil servant was arrested for pretending to be a policewoman in order to scam people in Central Jakarta, using the money to fund a lavish lifestyle. She had been carrying out the scam for several years.
