“Belajar bahasa bisa sangat menyenangkan asal kita memiliki pengajar, tempat dan lingkungan yang mengasyikkan. Salah satu tempat belajar bahasa yang seru adalah ILC.” Bo’ong deh!

Translated into English, the misleading sentence above reads: “Studying languages can be fun so long as we have a teacher and environment which is exciting. One such language school is ILC.”

We found this sentence on a website called Biznizindonesia (Business Indonesia), which mostly seems to be the home of ‘get rich quick’ scams of various descriptions.

http://biznizindonesia.com/ilc-kursus-bahasa-di-jakarta/

The site is not particularly impressive. Overall, it has a ‘flying by the seat of your pants’ feel. The ILC page features an amateurish, out-of-focus photo of the reception desk. The second photo (seen below) shows a class with the sum total of two students! It shows a rather bare room with no technology besides a whiteboard and markers. There is nothing exciting about this lingkungan (environment) that we can see. It is just a bog-standard TEFL classroom out of the 1990s. It isn’t as if anyone is impressed by whiteboards and markers in 2016, right?

ILC Blok M, overflowing with students

A couple more happy snaps are offered of the lobby of an ILC school. On the wall is the typical ‘inspirational/motivational’ drivel which seems to be so popular with dodgy language schools in Jakarta. As many of you will know, TBI tweets a couple of quotes from Gandhi or Mother Theresa every week,  as if this fraudulent business is rendered more respectable by stealing a few good lines from genuinely moral people!

The sentence offered by ILC on this website doesn’t even make much sense. It reads, “Education is simply the soul of a society as it passes.” The quote is from British mystery book writer Gilbert K. Chesterton. The full quote is, “Education is simply the soul of a society as it passes from one generation to another,” which does make sense. Perhaps the people at ILC simply ran out of wall space to paint the quote on? Or perhaps the final lines of the quote are now hidden behind a chair? Either way, it looks ridiculous on the website. In its current form the word ‘passes’ seems to suggest death, which is not exactly an auspicious omen!

More inspirational guff from con artists

In this sense, the word ‘passes’ might seem very apt, however. We have recently received notification that ILC Blok M shut its doors just weeks after it first opened. Once again there are angry and frustrated customers who have been cheated out of tens of millions of rupiah. There is more talk of going to the police to report Hussein Lee. (Warning here: Many people have previously reported this man and no action whatsoever was taken by either the police or immigration. Draw your own conclusions.)

In this light, the whole add takes on a sinister feel. It was put there with the deliberate intention of deceiving and cheating Indonesian students who want to better themselves through education. Forget all the talk about souls. The only thing ILC is passing to the next generation is fraud, dishonesty and criminality.

“ILC bisa ditemukan di beberapa mal-mal Jakarta seperti Blok M Plaza dan Poin Square Lebak Bulus.” (ILC can be found at various malls around Jakarta such as Blok M Plaza and Poin Square Lebak Bulus.) Anyone who cares about education or saving their money would be well-advised to stay away. ILC is a ‘pusat penipuan’- a den of trickery.