Buyers Beware: Police bust scam website selling fake tickets to Djakarta Warehouse Project

One of the things slowing the growth of Indonesia’s e-commerce industry is a general distrust of online businesses. Despite the fact that there are many well-established and respected online stores now operating in Indonesia, stories about scammers using fake websites and accounts to trick customers out of their cash still pop up far too often, making potential online shoppers wary.

The latest illegal Indonesian internet ploy hit partiers hoping to score tickets to the Djakarta Warehouse Project, Jakarta’s biggest dance music festival of the year. The next edition of DWP is taking place on December 9-10 and eager EDM fans are already buying up tickets. 

Unfortunately a fraudster decided to take advantage of DWP’s popularity and created a fake website, www.dwp2016.com (the site has been taken down but there is still a Google cache copy), that mimicked the look of the real DWP website, which is djakartawarehouse.com. The fake site offered tickets at a cheaper price than the real deal and apparently racked up hundreds of millions of rupiahs in sales before they were busted.

“[The fake website] looked the same and technically was almost the same,” said Jakarta Police Superintendent Budi Herman as quoted by Wartakota.

Authorities learned about the scam site after buyers of the fake ticket complained to DWP organizers Ismaya. Jakarta Police were able to track down the fraudsters to Pare-Pare, South Sulawesi, and on Monday arrested a 31-year-old identified as Lasellomo who allegedly masterminded the scheme. Police are still investigating the case, which they believe has a connection to another group of online scammers who were soliciting money for sick children.

The unfortunate lesson from all this is that online shoppers in Indonesia still need to be cautious about who they buy from and should always double-check to make sure they are using a legitimate website to make their purchases.



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