If you live in an apartment, it’s very likely that the apartment’s developers hold a spare key to your unit in case of emergencies. But if you happen to be living in the Gading Nias Residence Apartments in Kelapa Gading, North Jakarta, then there’s a good chance a thief used those spare keys to steal valuables from your apartment.
Over the course of a year, the suspect, 30-year-old Muhammad Dosi, who is also a resident of the building, managed to somehow obtain keys to 150 apartment units from the apartment’s developers. He duplicated those keys and returned the originals to the unknowing developers.
Using the duplicates, Muhammad entered people’s apartments when he knew they were away.
“He stole valuable objects that he eventually sold later on,” said North Jakarta Police Chief Susetio Cahyadi, as quoted by BeritaSatu today.
The apartment’s residents began to suspect that there was a thief among them and reported the case to the police last month. After some investigation, the police finally figured out who the thief was and arrested Muhammad in his apartment unit on September 18. There, they found 30 items, including expensive electronics and jewelry, that belonged to other tenants.
So far 25 tenants have come forward to report that they’ve had valuables stolen. Since Muhammad had access to 150 apartment units, it’s possible that more tenants are still unaware that they’ve had their valuables stolen.
At this point, the police believe that the developers did not aid Muhammad by giving him the spare keys in the first place and that they don’t know how the keys were stolen.
For his crime, Muhammad could face up to 7 years in prison.
Reader Interactions