Facebook hacking trick steals hundreds of millions of dong from group of young people

(Baonghean.vn)– After hacking the Facebook account, the group of young criminals will find a way to get the bank account, use technology to withdraw real money and then buy virtual currency bitcoin to erase traces.

On the morning of December 21, the leader of the Criminal Police Department of Nghe An Police said that Nguyen Duc Huy (born in 1998, a student at the College of Technology - University of Da Nang) was being detained. Previously, on December 7, Huy was prosecuted by the Nghe An Police Department for the crime of "Using computer networks, telecommunications networks, the Internet or digital devices to commit acts of property appropriation".

Nguyen Duc Huy at the police station. Photo: Pham Bang

Since mid-November 2017, the Criminal Police Department (PC45, Nghe An Police) has received reports from citizens that they were scammed out of hundreds of millions of dong by a group of people through the social network Facebook.

The group's method of fraud is to take over the Facebook account of the victim's acquaintance and then ask for the bank account number to transfer money from abroad. When the victim agrees, they continue to use sophisticated tricks and withdraw money from the victim's account to appropriate it.

After receiving the report, PC45 Department established a special case and assigned the High-Tech Crime Prevention Police Team to directly verify and clarify the case. After more than 10 days of investigation, on November 29, PC45 detectives raided a rented room in Hai Chau 1 Ward, Hai Chau District (Da Nang City) and arrested two subjects: Nguyen Duc Huy and Le Van Ngoc Tu (born in 1996, both with permanent residence in Quang Tri Town, Quang Tri Province). Here, the detectives seized many important documents and evidences demonstrating the criminal acts of the subjects.

The next day, the suspects were transferred to the Nghe An Police Investigation Agency. There, Huy and Tu confessed that they, along with Nguyen Van Dong (born in 1988), residing in Quang Tri town, Quang Tri province, had successfully carried out 14 fraud cases, appropriating 275 million VND from 14 victims in many provinces and cities.

Checking the subjects' phones, the detectives discovered that there were more than 350 phone numbers in the call list. After randomly selecting more than 15 phone numbers to text, 3 people in Nam Dinh, Da Nang, and Hai Duong responded that they were victims of this form of fraud.

The police have clarified that the method of fraud used by these subjects is to take control of the Facebook accounts of people who are or have been abroad. Then, through the list of friends, they find people with close relationships and then text with the purpose of asking for bank account numbers to send money from abroad. When the victim provides the account number, they use technological tricks to create a fake message on the victim's phone informing them that the bank account has been credited with an amount of money.

“They told the victims that in order to withdraw money, they had to click on a link provided by them and enter information such as full name, year of birth, ID number, phone number, and account password. To successfully complete the transaction, the victims also had to provide them with the OTP security code of the Internet banking service. After taking full control of the bank account, they withdrew all the money and then transferred it to other accounts to buy Bitcoin, then continued to sell this Bitcoin for cash,” said Major Ha Huy Duc, Team Leader of Team 7, PC45.

It is known that this fraud group consists of 4 subjects, led by Nguyen Duc Huy. To commit the crime, they assigned specific roles and tasks. In particular, Tu was assigned the task of hacking Facebook accounts, then researching and texting with victims to ask for bank account numbers. Once they had accounts, Huy and Dong were the ones who directly used high technology to fake messages and withdraw money. After selling Bitcoin, the money was transferred to Huy's bank account and then the group divided it among themselves.

At the police station, Huy stated that he was a first-year student majoring in information technology at the College of Technology - University of Da Nang. Although he had only been familiar with computers for a few months, Huy had already learned many sophisticated tricks online. Huy used the money he had embezzled to gamble online, winning more than 1 billion VND in one day. When he was arrested, Huy only had nearly 30 million VND left in his bank account.

According to the police, after clarifying that the subject Le Van Ngoc Tu did not commit fraud against the victim in Nghe An, he was handed over to the Da Nang City Police for handling. Currently, the police are continuing to arrest the subject Dong and investigate and clarify the case.

Pham Bang