Expensive lessons from victims of fraud and billions of dong through Facebook

Many victims fell into the "trap"

At the end of May 2020, Ms. CTH in Hung Nguyen Town, Hung Nguyen District posted a status on her personal zalo announcing that her Facebook account had been hijacked by a scammer. "My friends, if you receive a message via Facebook from H., please do not reply and follow the instructions in the message, because H.'s Facebook has been hijacked and used by a scammer to borrow money. My younger brother was scammed out of 12 million VND." Similarly, in Hung Tan Commune (Hung Nguyen), Ms. LTT also lost 50 million VND because scammers hijacked her friend's Facebook account and asked her to transfer money. Or on May 12, 2020, Ms. NTH (living in District 2, Ho Chi Minh City) received a message from her sister's Facebook account asking her to urgently transfer money to the account number of someone named Nguyen Thi Nhan to handle urgent work.

Because the two sisters had previously talked about money and buying and selling goods on Facebook, the sister was not on guard and immediately transferred 40 million VND to the account provided by her sister’s Facebook. In the same way, Mr. NLHC (in Tan Binh District, Ho Chi Minh City) was also tricked and transferred 30 million VND to the “hacker”.

Subject Do Thien Hung re-performed the act of appropriating a Facebook account at the police station. Photo courtesy of Quynh Trang

The above cases are some examples of dozens of cases that Thai Hoa Town Police have investigated and verified after receiving reports from people in the recent past. Thai Hoa Town Police established a special investigation and discovered a group specializing in hacking Facebook, in which Doan Vu Truong (born in 1991, residing in Trieu Ai, Trieu Phong, Quang Tri) was identified as the leader. Afterwards, the police force arrested Do Thien Hung (born in 1998), Vo Van My (born in 1994), Vo Minh Tinh (born in 1986) and Vu Quoc Ba (born in 2000), all residing in Trieu Phong district (Quang Tri) for fraud and appropriation of property, searched and seized 1 car, 8 mobile phones, 1 laptop, and more than 300 million VND in cash.

Not only that, it was initially determined that this fraud ring had appropriated more than 20 billion VND from others.

Also residing in Quang Tri province, in April 2018, Phan Anh Tuan residing in Thieu Phong district, Quang Tri province also hacked into the Facebook account of Ms. Le Thi Ha Giang (who was working in Japan at the time) to commit fraud. Ms. Giang is the younger sister of Ms. Le Thi Thu, living in Nghi Thuy ward, Cua Lo town. After that, the subject used the appropriated account to text Ms. Thu with the content "please transfer 46 million VND to your family because your mother is sick...". Tuan texted the account number and Ms. Thu transferred the money to Tuan without any suspicion.

According to information from the Provincial Police Criminal Police Department (PCO2), from 2018 to now, Phan Anh Tuan has successfully carried out 16 cases of appropriating Facebook accounts to text and scam friends and relatives of Facebook account owners and has appropriated billions of dong.

In the first 6 months of 2020, the Criminal Police Department (PCO2) of Nghe An Provincial Police received and investigated 25 cases of fraud and property appropriation via Facebook with a total loss of about 500 million VND. In the past few years, in Nghe An, there have been an average of 50-60 cases of criminals using Facebook accounts to commit fraud each year, causing losses to hundreds of people with an amount of about 1 billion VND.

Lieutenant Colonel Ha Huy Duc - PCO2 Department

Identify tricks, raise awareness

Lieutenant Colonel Ha Huy Duc said that through the investigation and the fight to exploit information from criminals who appropriated Facebook accounts to defraud money, it was found that criminals often choose "beautiful" Facebook accounts to appropriate, such as Facebook accounts of people working abroad, online business accounts, accounts with many interactions, many followers...

A gang that specializes in hacking and taking control of social media accounts to defraud and appropriate billions of dong from Facebook account owners was busted by Vinh City Police in April 2019. Photo courtesy of Minh Tam

Then they will take over by creating fake Facebook accounts and sending friend requests to people living and working abroad so that the scammers will have difficulty contacting the Facebook owner immediately to verify. After making friends, getting to know each other and chatting a few times online, they will send a fake link (containing malicious code) to the victim in the form of voting to receive promotions. For example, voting for the Voice Kids, voting for famous landscapes, voting for beauty queens... When the victim enters the link, enters their name and password to vote, their account name and password will be transferred to the account they manage.

Having obtained the login password, the subjects immediately took over the victim's Facebook account and proceeded to text the victim's friends and relatives to borrow money and ask them to send money. They often texted the victim's relatives such as father, mother, siblings, close friends... to ask them to transfer money to the account they managed. To legalize the amount of money they appropriated, they rented or bought many different bank accounts. After the victims transferred money through the account, they immediately withdrew cash through ATMs to divide it among themselves. More sophisticatedly, the subjects agreed on the method of action: if the victim was from the North, the bank account for them to receive money was in the Central or Southern region to avoid detection and investigation...

In addition to texting to transfer money or borrow money, when they take over a Facebook account and discover weaknesses in the account owner such as texting about adultery or sex chatting with others, the subjects will use those images and information to blackmail the account owner.

The subjects took over the victim's Facebook account and texted the victim's friends and relatives to borrow money and ask them to send money. Photo from the internet.

Therefore, Lieutenant Colonel Ha Huy Duc recommends: When detecting fraudulent behavior, Facebook users can report it to the police for handling. The police will use statements, combined with professional measures to verify the contact phone number, IP address of the computer using the Facebook application to identify the crime and the perpetrator. The responsibility to prove the crime and the violation belongs to the competent authorities. However, in order for the case to be cleared up soon, it is necessary to provide complete and accurate information to ensure that the police can prove the truth quickly and accurately.

Dr., Lawyer Nguyen Trong Hai, Trong Hai and Associates Law Officesaid, for the crime of fraud via Facebook, at Point c, Clause 1, Article 15 of Decree 167/2013/ND-CP stipulates: People who use fraudulent tricks to appropriate other people's property will be fined 1-2 million VND.

In case the fraudulent act has sufficient elements to be prosecuted for criminal liability for the crime of fraud to appropriate property under Article 174 of the 2015 Penal Code (amended in 2017), the lowest penalty is non-custodial reform for up to 3 years or imprisonment from 6 months to 3 years and the highest penalty is up to life imprisonment depending on the amount of money appropriated or the act committed.