TOEFL Certificate Swindler Conned 200 High School Students in Surakarta

Around 200 students at SMA Negeri 1 Surakarta were scammed by fake TOEFL-Like certificates swindler disguised as LBA Ganesha Yogyakarta.

Scammers offered TOEFL test service for SMAN 1 Surakarta students using a big discount trick on Tuesday, September 27th, 2022. The normal price was around IDR 3.000.000. However, the special offer said that students can pay IDR 110.000 only. 

Tempted by the offer, some students were interested.

Luna, 17, one of the students and victim of this fraud case said, “We never expected that they were fake since we thought this was some kind of a collaboration program between the school and the institution. We trust the school, so it was shocking for us.”

Some students found out about them being fake through an online news back in 2020. Despite that, the TOEFL test was still conducted on October 8th, 2022.

"We didn't do the test. We were afraid they would use our personal data for other crimes," Dinar, 17, another victim told us.

The school has no idea about the fraud case either. “We didn’t know they asked students to pay,” said Endang Siwi, the school counselling teacher.

No money was refunded. The school didn't do much even after finding out