Martini, 71, spent years saving up millions of rupiah to perform the Islamic pilgrimage of Umrah in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, by selling quail eggs in the city of Padang, West Sumatra. She was supposed to embark on the journey this year, until her dreams, and those of thousands of others, came crashing down in one of the biggest religious-based scams Indonesia has ever seen.
Martini bought her travel package through First Travel, a travel agency that has gone down in infamy on the suspicion that the company’s owners robbed 58,682 paying customers their right to go on the pilgrimage through their Ponzi scheme.
First Travel was founded by the husband and wife team of Andika Surachman and Anniesa Hasibuan. The agency sold promotional Umrah tour packages at a relatively cheap (but unsustainable) price to 72,682 customers, who were supposed to fly out to Mecca between December 2016 and May 2018. However, the agency only managed to send the first 14,000 of its customers on Umrah, using revenue generated from subsequent customers, before their company went bust.
Andika, Anniesa, and her sister Siti Nuraidah were all arrested this month for financial fraud. Following their arrests, it has become part of the media’s daily routine to release information about the suspects’ lavish lifestyles, allegedly funded with their victims’ money and greatly contributed to the company going bust. According to reports, Anniesa paid around $200,000 to enter her Muslim fashion line into New York Fashion Week this year, the couple bought luxurious houses and cars, spent Rp 1.7 billion ($125,000) during one trip to a mall and even spent Rp 400 million ($29,000) on curtains.
According to the latest data from the police, First Travel owes its customers Rp 848 billion ($63.5 million), and they have been ordered to refund their customers in full by the Central Jakarta District Court. The police have also seized the suspects’ assets, though questions have been raised as to whether the agency will able refund their customers after going bankrupt.
That kind of uncertainty has reportedly driven many of First Travel’s alleged victims into states of shock and depression. But fortune has come to a few of the victims, like Martini, who will get to go to Umrah thanks to the goodwill of numerous sympathetic netizens.
Martini’s story went viral earlier this week after she reportedly lost the will to eat because of the First Travel scam. Her story moved people like Fahd Pahdepie, the owner of a travel agency called Umrah Leadership Series (ULS), to collect donations from netizens who bought Martini an Umrah travel package.
“Thank you netizens, in just minutes we have managed to obtain Martini’s number and we have contacted her. Praise God, she is very grateful. She cried and did not stop saying she’s grateful,” Fahd wrote in a Facebook post.
ULS representatives went to meet Martini and give her the ticket yesterday. However, she had already received donations for tickets from other parties, and asked ULS to give the Umrah package to another First Travel victim.
“In this world full of greed, this old lady, who is a victim of that greed, showed a behavior that we could never have imagined before,” Fahd said, as quoted by Detik today.
ULS has given the Umrah package to an 80-year-old First Travel victim in Bukit Tinggi, West Sumatra. They are continuing to receive donations from the public to send more of First Travel’s victims on Umrah.
As for Martini, she is scheduled to fly out to Saudi on November 16.
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