Indonesia’s Gun E-Commerce Site Exposed as a Money-Grabbing Fraud

Credit: ontariolandlords.org

The team behind Indonesian gun e-commerce site Gudang Senjata (¹) has been apprehended by the police a couple of weeks ago, just days after the story went public on Detik and ours. One surprising fact is that the whole thing was a scam, and even I was convinced that the site was potentially really selling guns here. Fraudulent sites like these seem to be getting more deceptive, and Gudang Sejata is definitely not the only serious scam out there.

The scam is a smart one. I think what did it for me was the lengthy detail it provided for customers to be really sure that the site is genuine.

First, the site disclosed that it sells illegal guns and that the illegal nature of their site cannot be helped because the Indonesian government has banned gun ownership since 2010, even for self protection.

Second, the gun e-commerce folks were playing quite smart by outlining the reasons they can’t meet up with new customers: to avoid police traps. They also went to great lengths to explain how they usually deliver their products to customers which can avoid x-ray detection and trick delivery couriers.

Third, the last detail that made me believe the site was genuine were the photos of the guns on its site. It looks like Gudang Senjata really has the guns. This is shown by taking pictures of the guns inside the case like an amateur photographer, which is quite normal in any C2C marketplace.

How does the scam work? Simple. Victims transfer money to them, and the guns don’t get delivered. And best of all, because the victims know that they were trying to buy an illegal gun, they won’t spill the beans to the police. But after being in operation for three years and scamming hundreds of people, the perpetrators were finally caught. How much have these people earned? The police believes around IDR 600,000 (US$ 62) to IDR 10 million ($1,035) (²) every single day. Damn.

By the way, we found another gun e-commerce site which definitely looks like another scam here.

More Online Frauds

Though it’s normal to see people pulling a scam in the online C2C marketplace, a lot of those are lame in comparison to the gun e-commerce heist. For example, a scammer selling the Blackberry Q10 for a mere IDR 2 million ($207), way below the genuine price and even before it was launched in any place in the world. Duh. It’s fun to see the comments section of those fraud offers, especially remarks about how stupid the scammers are.

But now, more online frauds are becoming particularly sophisticated.

Earlier this week, another Detik report covered another fraud website (³) which seemed to show Indonesian telco Telkomsel giving out prizes to unsuspecting victims. The report said that the website looks quite identical to Telkomsel’s official site, complete with sub directories which provides information about the Telkomsel company. But alas, a few details like the SMS message and phone number just didn’t add up as it wasn’t sent from Telkomsel’s official number. The fraudulent SMS message itself looks like it was written by a 9-year old kid who didn’t know how to type either. But again, the site looked quite good.