Scam to steal money from bank account

Ms. H. (living in Hanoi), who sells watches, ice cream, glasses... via social networks, received a purchase request from a person named Thuy Phuong via Facebook. Ms. H. asked Thuy Phuong to transfer a deposit of 8.5 million VND. Just a few minutes later, this person sent Ms. H. a screenshot of the transfer order that had been made for the amount of 8.5 million VND.

While talking to Thuy Phuong, Ms. H. felt suspicious because this person asked her if she used electronic banking services (ibanking). Moreover, although it was already 2018, the money transfer order that Thuy Phuong sent back was written in 2017.

Still suspicious, Ms. H. received a message with the content: “VIETCOMBANK: VCB account 0781000... has just received a transaction with the amount of 8,500,000 VND MasterCard service. Customer TRINH... H. please access the following link http://ibanking-vietcombank.ga/ to confirm the transaction to the account. Thank you!”. This message was sent from the number 6788. Suspecting fraud, Ms. H. texted the nick Thuy Phuong on Facebook, but this person "ran away".

Message enticing bank account holders to click on the link

Ms. H. then shared this situation on a forum, some online sellers said they were also tricked by the nick Thuy Phuong using this trick. If the user is not vigilant and clicks on the link received from the message, they will be asked to provide the account number and password of the bank account...

Ms. Nguyen Thi Thu Hang, Head of Vietcombank's Electronic Banking Service Department, confirmed that the switchboard number sending text messages 6788 to customers is not a Vietcombank service. The messages that the bank proactively sends to customers are all branded "Vietcombank". In case customers want to make top-up transactions for their own phone number or look up information via SMS Banking service such as account balance, transactions, exchange rate information, ATM locations, etc., send a text message with the number 6167.

Ms. Hang affirmed that in the case where a customer's account receives money, if the customer registers to use SMS Banking service, Vietcombank will send a message notifying that the customer's account has been credited with the transaction amount, without requiring the customer to verify the information (at a link) as in the above fake case.

Near Tet, online transactions are quite numerous, payments are mainly made online through banks. According to Vietcombank, increasing transactions at the end of the year is a very normal rule.

Therefore, this can also be an opportunity for bad guys to take advantage of the lack of vigilance to use many fraudulent tricks from manual to sophisticated such as using high technology to steal money from negligent customers, lose vigilance through stealing card information, security information about customers' accounts. Therefore, users need to be cautious and follow the instructions for safe transactions.