The hunt for criminals only in the villa

Recently, in Hanoi and many provinces, there has been a rise in domestic subjects colluding with criminals abroad to impersonate authorities and call people to scam them.

In particular, there have been gangs of Chinese criminals who have come to Vietnam to return to defraud the Chinese people and at the same time “transfer their skills” to other individuals. Although their operations are very sophisticated and systematic, they have been dismantled by the High-Tech Crime Prevention Force of the Ministry of Public Security.

1. It was around 9am. In a super luxurious room in a 5-star resort on the coast of Hainan (China), after eating a bowl of special noodles, boss Li Min Tian was half lying, half sitting on the sofa, a cigar in his mouth, his fingers stroking an Ipad. The boss's eyes lit up when he saw that after just one night, the amount of money flowing into his account had reached several hundred thousand yuan. As if suddenly remembering something, Li called his subordinates and asked them to make passports for a group of juniors who were preparing to go on a "business trip".

At the same time, in a rather large and messy room in a shrimp farm in Tien Lang district (Hai Phong city), a group of Chinese people started working. After each phone call, there were loud laughs from the middle-aged men.

Suddenly, a guy's phone received a text message notification. He read it carefully and then bragged to his accomplices that he was about to return home with enough money to spend freely. The subjects did not know that their criminal activities had been on the radar of the High-Tech Crime Prevention Police Department (CSPCTPSDCNC), Ministry of Public Security of Vietnam for many months.

A leader of Department 3 of the Department of Criminal Police told us that around mid-2016, through reconnaissance work, the police discovered a group of foreigners appearing in Tien Lang district (Hai Phong city) with very suspicious signs.

They rented a lagoon that was almost completely isolated from the surrounding area. Every week, one of the group went to the market and bought a lot of food. No one in the area knew what their purpose was. The owner of the lagoon only knew that the Chinese group rented the land to research… earthworm farming!

However, through professional measures, the police discovered that this group of subjects were committing serious crimes, hidden under sophisticated tricks. The police established a special project to fight. A working group of Department 3 of the Department of Criminal Police for the Prevention and Control of Crime was present in Hai Phong City, coordinating with many professional units of the City Police to conduct continuous reconnaissance activities, in order to collect evidence to prepare to solve the case.

Despite the drizzly and cold weather, the detectives approached the shrimp farm and learned about the number of subjects and their modus operandi. At the same time, they also hacked into their VOIP switchboard to collect a lot of data and other electronic evidence.

The opportunity was ripe, one morning at the end of 2016, the working group of the Department of Criminal Police in Hai Phong coordinated with professional units of the Ministry of Public Security, Hai Phong City Police... suddenly raided the lagoon area in Tien Lang district, arrested all the Chinese and Taiwanese subjects, and seized many exhibits including computers with hundreds of thousands of MB of data.

The police agency has clarified that the above group of subjects, under the direction of a boss in China, came to Vietnam to set up a VOIP switchboard (calling over the Internet) to make fraudulent calls and appropriate property of Chinese people.

They pretended to be police officers and announced that they were investigating them for being involved in a serious case under the direction of the Party Central Committee, suspected of laundering millions of yuan. When the victims explained that they were not involved in the case, the subjects demanded that they transfer the money in their accounts for the police to check, and if it was not related to the case, they would return it immediately.

The subjects asked the victims not to disclose to anyone and instructed them to use Internet banking services to transfer money or transfer via ATM to their designated accounts. With this trick, the amount of money they appropriated from the victims amounted to hundreds of thousands of yuan.

2. Previously in 2014, the Department of Criminal Police also coordinated with Hai Phong City Police to discover many groups of Chinese and Taiwanese (China) people entering Vietnam and setting up a VOIP switchboard system to make phone calls impersonating the police and the prosecutor's office to make fraudulent calls and appropriate property of Chinese citizens.

According to the representative of the leader of Department 3, the Department of Criminal Police has organized an investigation force to verify and discover a group of Chinese and Taiwanese (China) people renting an entire separate villa in the Anh Dung 3 villa area (Anh Dung ward, Duong Kinh district, Hai Phong city) as a place to live and conduct criminal activities. They hired Vietnamese people to buy food and signed contracts to register for high-speed Internet services with Vietnamese Internet service providers.

The subjects installed many cameras around the villa for observation, making reconnaissance work difficult. However, through professional measures, the police agency grasped the number of people in the villa, about 20 subjects. They almost only lived inside the villa 24/24 hours and occasionally went to the roof of the villa to smoke, take a break, and rest.

At the same time, the police also determined that every day from the villa above, there were an average of about 100 calls to landline and mobile phone subscribers in China, some conversations lasted about 5-10 minutes, some lasted for hours. Because the source of collected documents was large and the language was Chinese, the detectives of Department 3 had to continuously take turns to translate, analyze, and assemble the phone calls accurately as evidence for the fight.

Evidence seized after dismantling a telecommunications fraud ring of Chinese subjects.

The translation from Chinese to Vietnamese shows that the calls all have the same scenario: impersonating an employee of a Shanghai express delivery company calling the victim to inform them of a package. Because the victim's address is too far away and the sender is not familiar, the express delivery company opened the package and found many ID cards.

According to regulations, the parcel was transferred to the police for handling. Then they continued to pretend to be the police and announced that they were investigating them because they were involved in a serious case that the Central Party was directing the investigation, suspected of money laundering of millions of yuan. The victim claimed that he was not involved in the case, and the person impersonating the police asked that the money in the account be transferred for the police to check, and if it was not related to the case, it would be returned immediately.

In addition, the subjects also used other scenarios such as: stating the reason for the victim to make a passport to go to Myanmar, then personal information was used in connection with very serious cases that the police were investigating... The police also identified a number of successful scam calls that appropriated about 220,000 NDT (about 750 million VND) from a victim in Shanghai (China).

The investigation agency also discovered that this group of subjects regularly contacted and communicated with another group of subjects through QQ chat tools. The verification process determined that this second group rented a house on Nguyen Van Linh Street (Du Hang Kenh Ward, Le Chan District, Hai Phong City) and had similar activities to the group of subjects in Anh Dung Ward (Le Chan District).

On November 4, 2014, implementing the plan approved by the special task force, the High-Tech Police force and Hai Phong City Police simultaneously launched an inspection of two dens of the subjects, catching 28 subjects, including 7 Chinese subjects and 21 Taiwanese - Chinese subjects, making calls to China, and seizing many scripts, computers, and phones related to the subjects' criminal acts.

Exploiting the arrested subjects, the crime-solving force discovered another group of Taiwanese and Chinese subjects organizing criminal activities at a villa in the Me Linh villa area (Anh Dung ward, Duong Kinh, Hai Phong).

After reporting and receiving approval from the leaders of the Special Task Force, the task force continued to deploy forces to surround, suddenly inspect, and arrest 14 subjects (including 3 Taiwanese subjects, 11 Chinese subjects) at the new location along with many documents, exhibits, and means of criminal activities./.