The Indonesian Police have made some important arrests related to a recent string of high-profile cyber-crimes.

After tracing a number of individuals that are supposed members of the Muslim Cyber Army of hoax propagators, on Sunday they detained three people that they thought belonged to the hacker group that was responsible for infiltrating the systems of IT companies in order to hold them ransom for Bitcoins.

Law officials from the Jakarta Cyber ​​Crime Sub-Directorate apprehended the three hackers, who were alleged members of ‘Surabaya Blackhat’, a group of criminal hackers that were from the East Java city of Surabaya.

Roberto Pasarib, Cyber ​​Crime Police Chief said they exposed the hacking group after they were supplied with information from foreign law enforcement agencies via the IC3 (Internet Crimes Complaint Center).

“We were informed there is a group of people in Indonesia who were illegally accessing electronic systems owned by people in America and 42 other countries, including Indonesia,” Pasarib told Detik.

The cyber crime chief said that they found evidence of that showed that the hackers infiltrated in more than 3,000 IT systems, including one that belonged to the government of Los Angeles. They said some of received payments were worth roughly around IDR500 million (USD35,000).

From this information, the Indonesian police was able connect six suspects to the crime and trace three of them that were living in Surabaya (all of them aged 21). The other remaining three are still being pursued by officials.

Pasarib said the hackers infiltrated into the internet security systems of groups and individuals, after which they held the data for ransom and demanded for the payments to be made in Bitcoin from Paypal accounts.

When the police made the arrests, they found evidence in their mobile phones, laptops, modems, e-mail accounts, Paypal accounts and Bitcoin accounts.

The three detained suspects will face charges under Indonesian laws that preside over Internet transactions and data theft, with a possible sentence of 8 years in prison if found guilty.