Man Pretends to be a Cop to Sleep With Women, Rent Expensive Cars, Extort Money

Ari Septian Pratama, a 21-year-old from the South Sumatran city of Palembang, in Indonesia, has been living the past month as a police officer, even though he wasn’t even close to one. Coconut Jakarta says that he started impersonating a cop as a dare and probably had trouble stopping when he saw how many benefits he was reaping from it.

He wasn’t fighting crime, though. Instead, Pratama would use his fake cop uniform and his fake but very realistic gun to impress the ladies. He told the police (the real cops, that is) that his goal was only to get them to sleep with him, but in reality, he also got financial benefits from it. Specifically, he would use them to rent for him expensive cars and even got them to give him cash.

Pratama worked his victims under the alias “Dr. Julian Saputra.” He claimed he was a doctor of police forensics and the son of a regional police chief, which added more importance to his name in the eyes of his victims.

Again, the suspect insisted that he was never out to exact monetary gain from his victims, but at least 2 of them have testified saying he got them to withdraw cash from ATMs, which they later handed over to him.

“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,” he confessed. He was brought out in front of the local police headquarters and made to explain himself for the media.

Pratama was caught when one of the women he tricked became suspicious. At the time of his arrest, he was wearing his fake cop uniform. The real police were probably not amused.