End of year online fraud boom
Impersonating friends to ask for phone cards, buying goods, borrowing money without paying back... are online scams that have been around for a long time. However, as Lunar New Year approaches, these activities increase.
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| Social media appropriation and fraud increase at the end of the year |
Various tricks
Ms. Ha, who sells processed foods online, said that recently a customer called to ask if she could buy a phone card. This person said that a Facebook page with a photo of Ha had texted her to ask her to buy a 200,000 VND phone card. “I went to this Facebook page to check and discovered that someone had stolen a photo from my photo library to create a fake account. Although this trick is old, if the customer is not careful and calls back, they will definitely lose money,” Ms. Ha said.
Ms. Hong, who lives in Hanoi and specializes in online sales, also received a purchase request via a strange Facebook account named Thuy Phuong. Ms. Hong asked Thuy Phuong to transfer a deposit of 8.5 million VND. Just a few minutes later, this person sent back a screenshot of the transfer order that had been made for the amount of 8.5 million VND. At the same time, Ms. Hong received a text message from the number 6788 with the content "VIETCOMBANK account of... has received the amount of 8.5 million VND" and asked Ms. Hong to go to the attached website link to confirm the transaction of money to the account.
Suspicious, Ms. Hong contacted Thuy Phuong again to ask, but this person had already run away. After Ms. Hong shared this information online, some people who were victims of Thuy Phuong also spoke up to confirm.
Not so lucky, Ms. Phuong, living in Ho Chi Minh City, also selling online, received an order from a stranger via Facebook. The customer said that he was abroad, buying goods for relatives in Vietnam, so he would transfer money via Western Union and asked for Ms. Phuong's account number and phone number to transfer money. Not long after, a message was sent to Ms. Phuong's phone number with the content "Western Union notification: VCB account balance 00071xxxx changed to xx,000,000 VND, received 85 USD...".
Next, she received another message asking her to confirm the transaction at the website: http://western-union-quocte.wixsite.com/ibanking (this is a scam website).
Ms. Phuong accessed this website and followed the instructions. The fake website also displayed the words “Procedure for receiving money: Please verify your personal OTP code to receive money”. Ms. Phuong immediately entered the OTP code that the bank sent to the fake website and immediately, the scammers took the OTP code and entered it into Ms. Phuong’s bank account to transfer 10 million VND to another account.
 Western Union Scam Fake Message |
Can't trust blindly
Over the past week, several banks have issued warnings about online scammers. In its announcement, VIB Bank said that scammers often create fake Facebook accounts of relatives and friends and ask customers to receive money through international money transfers. The scammers will provide customers with links to fake pages of international money transfer websites. When customers log in on these fake links, they inadvertently provide information to scammers to initiate money transfer transactions on the banks' websites.
According to banks, the most common is to attack and take over a person's Facebook account, then impersonate that person to contact friends and family and offer emergency help such as buying phone cards, lending money... Although this phenomenon has been widely warned, some users are still subjective and fall into the trap.
VPBank also said it has received many requests for support from customers who have been scammed online. There are cases where customers are contacted by friends via Facebook asking to borrow money and immediately transfer money without checking the information again.
Ms. Nguyen Thi Thu Hang, Head of Vietcombank's Electronic Banking Services Department, confirmed that the switchboard number sending text messages 6788 to customers is not Vietcombank's. The messages that the bank proactively sends to customers all carry the brand name "Vietcombank". At the same time, when a customer's account receives money, Vietcombank will not send a message asking for information confirmation as in the above fake case.
According to Mr. Ngo Tran Vu, Director of Nam Truong Son Security Company, when encountering a situation like the above, users must verify again by calling directly, or even asking the bank to verify whether the money has been transferred to the account or not if selling goods to avoid losing money unjustly.
