📰 From the news · Impersonating a real college/agent
Two years as a company doctor on a high-school education: the Surabaya case that showed what an online hiring process does not check
In 2023 Indonesia's health system discovered that a person with no medical education had been employed as a doctor for two years, hired online during the pandemic on the strength of documents belonging to someone else.
According to Gutzy Asia and VOI, the person, identified as Susanto, was recruited in 2020 through an online process run by PHC Hospital in Surabaya, part of the Pelindo port group, and given a two-year contract. Susanto was placed not on hospital wards but in an occupational-health clinic serving an oil-and-gas field operator's site, working for a monthly salary reported at around 7.5 million rupiah. The application file, VOI reported, contained a forged identity card, a diploma and a doctor's registration certificate in the name of a real physician, Anggi Yuritno. The deception came apart on 12 June 2023 when the contract came up for extension and the documents were re-examined. Investigators said Susanto had never studied medicine, had graduated only from high school and had picked up medical knowledge from YouTube and from friends; the hospital said the impostor had never been placed in front of general patients. VOI also reported that Susanto had previously served four years in prison for fraud. The case was handed to the East Java regional police.
There is no student victim here, and the case is on this site for a different reason. The registration certificate that got Susanto hired was real; it belonged to someone else. Indonesia, like India and most countries, publishes its register of licensed doctors online, and a check of the name against the person would have ended the story in 2020. Nobody made the check because the hiring was remote and the paperwork looked complete.
The same gap is where a great many admission and credential frauds live: documents that are genuine but not the applicant's, presented to people who verify the paper and not the person. Whether you are checking a doctor, a college's "director" or an agent's "registration", ask the issuing body to confirm the holder, not just the number.
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This is a news-sourced case summary written by the TrustMBBS team, not a first-person account; see the sources above. They reflect one person's experience and are not a verdict on any institution. Report your own: Report a scam or tell your story.