A diploma downloaded from Google, seven clubs and the U-19 national team, Rp25 million a month: the fake PSS Sleman doctor exposed when a cardiologist pointed to the KKI register

Indonesia registers its doctors through the Indonesian Medical Council, the KKI, which runs a public doctor-check website; a physician also needs a registration certificate, the STR, and a practice licence, the SIP. The register exists so that an employer or a patient can confirm a name in minutes. This case shows what happens when well-funded employers never look, and it sits beside the Surabaya company-doctor case recorded elsewhere on this site.

According to Antara, police arrested Elwizan Aminudin at his home in Cibodas, Bogor, West Java, on 24 January 2024. The national football association, PSSI, said he had posed as a doctor from 2013 to 2021 with a forged medical diploma in the name of Universitas Syiah Kuala in Banda Aceh. Its secretary-general listed the teams he had treated: Persita Tangerang, Barito Putra, the U-19 national team twice, Bali United, Madura United, Sriwijaya FC, Kalteng Putra and finally PSS Sleman. The university was the victim of the forgery, not a party to it.

detikcom reported the indictment. Around 2015, prosecutors said, he found a Universitas Syiah Kuala medical diploma through a Google search, downloaded it and edited his own name onto it on a laptop; he had never studied medicine there. He first used it in 2016 to join Madura United, and joined PSS Sleman in February 2020 on Rp15 million a month, rising to Rp25 million a month in 2021. The indictment put PSS Sleman's loss at Rp254.1 million in salary plus a Rp16.2 million bonus. According to detikJogja, the scheme unravelled on 1 December 2021 when a cardiologist posted on social media advising clubs to verify doctors on the KKI doctor-check site. PSS reported him to Polres Sleman on 3 December 2021, and the university confirmed by letter No. 5752/UN11/WA.01.00/2021 that the diploma was fake. Prosecutors sought three years. On 29 May 2024 Sleman District Court sentenced him to two years and six months for fraud under Article 378 of the Criminal Code.

For eight years, clubs able to pay a team doctor Rp25 million a month never asked the one question that would have ended it, and the check that finally did was free, public and prompted by a stranger with a phone. According to Antara, PSSI now requires doctors and physiotherapists at its clubs and national teams to submit diplomas legalised by the issuing medical faculty and to hold a valid STR and SIP, cross-checked with the universities and the Indonesian Doctors Association, IDI.

For a student or family weighing medicine abroad, the lesson runs both ways. A diploma is only paper; what makes a doctor is a name on the regulator's register. Check any 'doctor' who advises you there, and check that the college you are offered leads to registration at home. Verify the institution directly, pay fees to the college and keep your originals. The register, not the framed certificate, protects a real graduate from the next person who edits a university's name onto a downloaded file.