70 days of tracking 110 scratch cards to expose Phan Van Vinh case

The first-instance trial of former Lieutenant General, former Director General of the General Department of Police Phan Van Vinh and 91 defendants in the online gambling ring worth tens of thousands of billions of VND just ended in November. This is the largest online gambling case in Vietnam to be busted, with the protection of two police generals, but the clue came from the 55 million VND fraud of a 9X youth living in Quang Tri.

One day in mid-May 2017, Ms. Vo Minh Phuong (Viet Tri city, Phu Tho) received a Facebook message from her aunt named "Hang Nhu" who lives in Hanoi and is traveling abroad. She said she was about to return to Vietnam and asked Phuong to buy 110 scratch cards, each worth 500,000 VND, to top up her account.

"The aunt" also asked her for her personal information and bank account number to transfer money. A while later, via Facebook message, she received a photo of a money transfer receipt from an American bank in Vietnam. Trusting her, on May 16, 2017, Ms. Phuong scratched and sent the full codes of 110 cards.

Phuong did not know that the person she was contacting was an impersonator. Through a relative, she later learned that her uncle's social media account had been hacked. Phuong reported the incident to Phu Tho Police.

Mr. Le Xuan Loc (Head of the Office of Prosecution, Investigation and Trial of the People's Procuracy of Phu Tho province) said that when handling the case, the People's Procuracy and the police determined that this was a form of fraud with familiar tricks, but many people were still not vigilant.

When searching for the person who appropriated 110 scratch cards, the investigation agency followed the limited information from a name, a phone number and the business name, Vietnam Telecommunications and Digital Entertainment Joint Stock Company (GTS).

After 70 days of verification, going to Hue, Quang Binh, Quang Tri, the authorities found the culprit was Le Van Huy (21 years old, from Quang Tri). The Phu Tho prosecution agencies at that time also only thought this was a small-scale fraud case.

In August 2017, Huy was prosecuted for two crimes:Using the internet to commit acts of property appropriation and gambling.Arrested on July 26, 2017, Huy quickly admitted his actions, stating that after taking possession of 110 scratch cards, he used them to gamble at the Rikvip/Tip.Club game portal and let his friends use them. All of them lost everything.

From Huy's testimony, the online gambling ring worth tens of thousands of billions of dong was traced. Mr. Loc said that verifying GTS's tax declaration showed that from January to April 2017, although it was not a famous company, its revenue was up to more than 2,000 billion dong. This large amount of money made Phu Tho's prosecution agencies suspect that GTS had illegal invoice trading and money laundering activities...

During the process of working with GTS, the authorities found that this business was related to the operation of the game Rikvip/Tip.Club. This was a popular online card game at that time, advertised openly. Many people, whenever they went on social networks, "saw the advertisement right in their faces".

Recharging virtual money to play games only uses scratch cards from major telecommunications networks, and exchanging virtual money also goes through many reputable payment units. The way this game operates is systematic and public. However, Phu Tho's prosecution agencies are still concerned that when comparing with current regulations, this game has enough signs of online gambling activities.

"All games do this by depositing money to buy virtual currency, but then exchanging virtual currency for real money is a violation. The law stipulates that virtual items can only be used in games and cannot be exchanged for real money," said Mr. Loc.

Why is this game still operating so widely despite its violations? After investigating further, the investigation agency discovered that the operating unit is CNC Company, with Nguyen Van Duong as Chairman of the Board of Directors.

Coming here, the officers of the Phu Tho prosecution agency were even more surprised to learn that CNC is a professional company of the police, with an office at 10 Ho Giam (Hanoi) - the headquarters of the General Department of Police. Notably, the card game Rikvip/Tip.Club has never been licensed to operate by the Ministry of Information and Communications.

According to the prosecution agency, the gambling portal was established by CNC and its partner VTC Online in mid-2015, establishing 25 first-level agents and nearly 6,000 second-level agents in 24 provinces and cities. The total illegal revenue of the network by the time it was dismantled at the end of 2017 was more than 10,000 billion VND.

43 million accounts have deposited virtual money into the Rikvip/TipClub game portal. Notably, this gambling ring has the "backing" of two people who used to be the General Director of the General Department of Police and the Director of the Department of High-Tech Crime Prevention.

At the end of the first phase of the trial on the afternoon of November 30, among the 92 defendants, Huy was sentenced to 18 months in prison, Duong was sentenced to 10 years, former General Director Phan Van Vinh was sentenced to 9 years, and former Director Hoa was sentenced to 10 years.

According to the recommendation of the People's Court of Phu Tho province, thousands of related people continue to be investigated in phase two.