Hijacking social media accounts and asking for 'money transfers'

According to statistics from the Department of Investigation Police on Social Order Crimes (Department of Criminal Police) of Thanh Hoa Provincial Police, from December 15, 2021 to October 30, 2022, Thanh Hoa Police discovered 125 cases, 120 subjects related to high-tech crimes and foreign elements, causing losses of 29 billion VND. Notably, the victims in cyber fraud cases are mainly women.

Nhu Xuan district police broke up a case and arrested a group of fraudsters who appropriated more than 5 billion VND.

Faced with increasingly complex and sophisticated developments of high-tech crimes, in recent times, Thanh Hoa Provincial Police have proactively advised the Party Committee and authorities on many policies and plans to direct units and localities to strengthen preventive solutions and effectively combat high-tech crimes.

At the same time, direct the police of professional departments and localities to proactively grasp the situation, prevent and combat organizations, networks and individuals who take advantage of high technology to commit crimes. Along with the fight, the police force will step up propaganda and dissemination of the situation, methods and tricks of this type of crime on the mass media.

Thereby, contributing to raising awareness of self-protection of assets of agencies, businesses, individuals, as well as promptly providing information and signs of criminal activities in the process of using information technology, using computers for business and communication. In addition, the police force strengthens coordination with agencies and businesses operating in the field of information technology such as post and telecommunications, banking, and finance to exchange criminal information, improving the effectiveness of coordination in the fight against high-tech crimes.

Lieutenant Colonel Nguyen Xuan Toan, Deputy Head of the Department of Investigation Police on Social Order Crimes, Thanh Hoa Provincial Police, said: In 2022, the situation of cybercrime continued to have many complicated developments, in which the crime of fraud and property appropriation emerged.

Specifically, the scammers operating in cyberspace reside in many provinces and cities across the country, and even foreigners collude with domestic criminals to commit crimes. Through the investigation, it has been shown that there are currently more than 10 fraudulent methods of appropriating assets in cyberspace. The majority of scammers are women (accounting for more than 90%), including officials, civil servants, and workers who are working or have retired.

Some common tricks are: Criminals set up sales accounts on social networks, introduce the sale of certain items, when someone places an order and transfers money, they cut off contact; criminals send strange links to personal accounts asking for sharing, help with liking, then find ways to take over the accounts to scam friends and relatives of the account owners; criminals impersonate judicial agencies, call victims and say that the victims are involved in a certain case or have a receipt for an administrative violation... then ask the victims to transfer money to pay the fine to take over...

With the drastic participation of the police forces at all levels, in 2022, Thanh Hoa Provincial Police discovered 125 cases, 120 criminals using high technology, of which 106 cases, 114 defendants were prosecuted, and 6 subjects were administratively punished. Typically, on May 11, 2022, the Criminal Police Department, Thanh Hoa Provincial Police received a crime report from Mr. LNT (born in 1997, in Quang Chau ward, Sam Son city, Thanh Hoa) about being scammed and having his property stolen by a person using the Facebook account "Dien may Anh Tuan".

On April 5, 2022, Mr. T. read a post by a person with the Facebook account "Dien may Anh Tuan" with the content "selling a tractor worth 35,000,000 VND". After negotiating the purchase and sale with the above account owner to buy the tractor for 32 million VND, Mr. T. transferred 16 million VND as a deposit to the account named Hoang Anh Tuan. After receiving the deposit, the owner of the Facebook account "Dien may Anh Tuan" continued to call Mr. T. to introduce another tractor head and a tractor mill for sale for 34 million VND.

Because he wanted to buy, Mr. T. trusted and transferred another 17 million VND as a deposit. After receiving the deposit, this subject asked Mr. T. to transfer another 1 million VND, but Mr. T. did not agree and was blocked from all communication via Facebook. During the investigation, PC02 clarified and arrested Vu Minh Duc (born in 1993, in Pho Yen City, Thai Nguyen Province) for fraud and property appropriation.

In early July 2022, the police of Nhu Xuan district continuously received many reports from the public about unknown subjects on the Internet appropriating large amounts of money in bank accounts. Typically, on June 12, 2022, Ms. TTT in Quang Thai commune, Quang Xuong district, while on a business trip in Nhu Xuan district, was scammed by subjects and lost 340 million VND; on June 24, Ms. LTTr. in Hoa Quy commune, Nhu Xuan district, was robbed of 22.2 million VND; on July 7, Ms. NTTH in Son Tra district, Da Nang city, was robbed of 410 million VND...

During the investigation, the police of Nhu Xuan district arrested Le Van Vy (born in 1995); Ly Hoang Dieu (born in 2000) in Son Tra district, Da Nang city and Truong Cong Hay (born in 1995); Nguyen The Hien (born in 1993) in Duy Xuyen district, Quang Nam province. The seized exhibits included: 13 mobile phones, 25 SIM cards, 5 bank accounts, 1 laptop and many other objects and documents related to the case.

At the investigation agency, the subjects declared that their trick was to design fake interfaces of some banks, then, the subjects pretended to be bank employees to call to contact and advise customers, informing them that their accounts were having problems due to errors, wrong money transfers, or being locked, etc. To fix this problem, the subjects sent the account owners a fake link to the bank's website and asked them to enter account information, passwords, provide OTP codes, etc.

After that, the subjects stole the personal account information of the account owner and then took over the account login to transfer money from one account to another to appropriate. With the above trick, from 2019 until the time of arrest, the subjects had appropriated assets of many account owners with an amount of more than 5 billion VND.

Lieutenant Colonel Nguyen Xuan Toan added: The activities of this type of crime take place in cyberspace so they are rarely exposed and are mostly discovered when the victim reports it. The subject has time to respond, so the work of detecting crimes is difficult.

On the other hand, the subjects are located in many provinces and cities across the country and abroad, making it very difficult to collect, verify documents, and consolidate evidence. In addition, high-tech criminals often operate in an organized, transnational manner, with close connections, scientific and technological expertise, and use many sophisticated methods and tricks to conceal their crimes.

Therefore, people need to regularly update information about crimes posted by the police and media on radio, television, and social networks, especially criminal activities, to protect themselves. In particular, do not provide personal information or bank accounts to anyone without verification. At the same time, do not transfer money without checking, verifying, and not knowing who the recipient is. When detecting signs of fraud, immediately report to the authorities for support.