Owner of a furniture store in Vinh City lost 50 million VND to a person impersonating a fire police officer to order a bed.

Hook to cheat

At around 5:00 p.m. on June 21, Mr. NVL, the owner of a furniture manufacturing facility in Vinh City (name and address withheld - PV) received a message via Zalo from a woman named Hai Yen asking the facility to send some bed models to order. After that, this woman chose a model and agreed to order 13 beds. Next, the woman called Mr. L via Zalo and asked him to send a handwritten invoice stating the price of 13 beds multiplied by 5.8 million VND/bed to request the accountant to transfer a 50% deposit in advance. This person introduced herself as Hai Yen, working at the Nghe An Fire Police to buy beds for the unit. After writing the invoice and transferring the account number to wait for the deposit, the woman named Hai Yen agreed and called back many times to agree with the owner of the furniture manufacturing facility.

Not stopping there, at noon the next day, June 22, the woman called and texted Mr. L. again to ask him to buy 12 golden oak rubber mattresses and continuously urged the owner of the facility to find them to deliver on time. While Mr. L. reported back to ask some friends who sell blankets, sheets, pillows, and mattresses, the woman called and texted to introduce Mr. L. to an address in Thanh Hoa that sells golden oak rubber mattresses and asked the furniture facility to contact the suggested address. The reason given was to concentrate on one point of contact for convenience in transportation and bill payment.

After Mr. L. called and contacted via Zalo, he received a quote from the mattress supplier located in Thanh Hoa and Mr. L. then sent the quote back to the woman. After receiving the quote, the woman ordered again and asked the owner of the furniture store to add 50% of the bed price and 100% of the mattress price to notify the accountant to transfer the money. After Mr. L. added and sent a handwritten invoice with the amount of 149,900,000 VND, the woman agreed. Then, this person sent Mr. L. a photo of the successful money transfer. However, after waiting for about 15 minutes and not seeing the bank notify the money has been received, Mr. L. called back and the woman insisted that it was a system error and said that it would take about 1 to 2 hours to receive it.

At the same time, the side of Mr. NVL who ordered the mattress also continuously urged to close the order to deliver the goods in time for the bus, at the same time, sent the account number asking Mr. L. to quickly transfer the deposit to ship the goods. In response to the urging, because there was not enough money in the account, Mr. L. asked a younger brother to transfer the amount of 50 million VND and took a photo to confirm the successful transaction and sent it to the mattress supplier with an address in Thanh Hoa and the mattress supplier confirmed that it had received it.

Next, a woman named Hai Yen who introduced herself as working for the Nghe An Fire Police continued to call and text via Zalo asking Mr. NVL to buy 20 more mattresses to transfer with the order and also asked Mr. L. to send his account number to transfer money. Thinking that his bank was slow in processing the transaction, the amount of 149,900,000 VND transferred by the woman named Hai Yen had not arrived yet, Mr. L. took his younger brother's VPBank account number and sent it back to the woman. Immediately after that, the woman also took a photo of the successful bank transaction and transferred it to Mr. L. However, when he waited and did not see the money, Mr. L. called the woman and was assured that the bank was processing it and would definitely receive both transactions in 1 hour.

At the same time, Mr. L.'s side who ordered the mattress kept urging him to transfer the deposit to ship the goods on time. From insisting on depositing 50% of the total amount of 369 million VND for the order of 20 mattresses, the mattress seller kept calling and texting via Zalo urging Mr. L. to deposit as much as he wanted. When Mr. L. said he only had 5 million VND left and the mattress seller was okay with it, Mr. L. realized he had been scammed.

Need to raise vigilance

Mr. NVL said: It was only when the mattress seller kept urging me to transfer any deposit, even 5 million VND, that I realized I had been scammed. I kept calling both the woman who introduced herself as working for the Nghe An Fire Police and the person who was introduced to order the mattress with an address in Thanh Hoa, but no one answered the phone and I only received a text message saying "Sorry, I don't accept this call".

According to Mr. L., there were few orders after Tet, so when someone placed a large order, he introduced himself as a member of the Public Security Department, with a profile picture of an officer or soldier wearing Fire Prevention and Rescue Police uniform, speaking with a Nghe An accent, so he was quite subjective.

“First, the person who ordered the bed, after getting my account number, used software to cut and paste the image to show that the money had been transferred and sent it back to me, while I still thought that it was due to a system error that the money had not arrived. It is worth mentioning that the person had colluded with another party to trap me, specifically from a bed buyer, through me to ask him to order a mattress with the reason of convenience for paying the bill, as well as shipping.

While the side that ordered the bed insisted that they had transferred 50% of the bed price and 100% of the money to buy the mattress to gain trust, at the same time, the side that ordered the mattress urged them to transfer the deposit to deliver the goods on time. It was because of the trust that they would receive the money within 1 to 2 hours because of a system error, combined with the constant pressure to transfer money to close the mattress order and deliver it to the customer on time that I was deceived," said Mr. NVL.

In fact, this form of fraud has appeared before in Da Nang, accordingly, the subjects often choose small, newly operating businesses to commit fraud. This is a new method of property appropriation fraud. Therefore, first of all, when knowing that they have been scammed, the owners of the establishments need to file a report so that the police can verify, investigate, and strictly handle violators before the law.

At the same time, to avoid falling into the trap, people also need to raise their vigilance. Especially with the fact that people are currently very sophisticated in faking successful money transfer transactions. If there are people texting or calling to perform similar acts as mentioned above, not only with furniture items, it is necessary to immediately notify the authorities for timely handling.