'Pretty girl' breaks into bank account and steals hundreds of millions

The Investigation Police Agency of Bac Lieu Province has just initiated a case, prosecuted the accused, and detained Phan Van Minh (23 years old, from Phu Tan district, Ca Mau, temporarily residing in Dong Nai province), Tran Thi Loan (23 years old), Nguyen Van Phuc (29 years old, all residing in Dong Nai province) and Tran Van Ngoc (22 years old, from Nam Dinh, temporarily residing in Dong Nai province) to investigate the act of "Using computer networks, telecommunications networks, and the Internet to commit acts of property appropriation".

Sophisticated tricks

According to the investigation, in August 2017, the Criminal Police Department of Bac Lieu Provincial Police received a complaint from the Investigation and Anti-Fraud Department of Vietnam Prosperity Bank (VPBank).

Specifically, in June 2017, VPBank discovered a group of people appropriating money from many customers' accounts. The amount of money they appropriated amounted to hundreds of millions of VND. Upon receiving the report, the Criminal Police Department of Bac Lieu Province Police proceeded to verify the case.

Using professional measures, the Investigation Police Agency determined that the criminal's trick was to access VPBank's customer information management system.

They discover which accounts in the system have been disbursed and have large loan amounts, then they pretend to be customers and call the bank's customer service center to ask for the account number. Then, they log into the account and register for internet banking service. The system will send a password to the customer's phone number registered in the account.

According to the police, to get this password, the subjects called customers pretending to be VPBank employees and asked them to send back their passwords to make the disbursement. Trusting them, the customers sent their OTP passwords to the subjects. At this point, they just waited to receive the password, logged into their accounts and transferred money to other accounts.

Bac Lieu Provincial Police determined that the perpetrators must be proficient in information technology and may have worked or are working for VPbank.

Although the method of the criminals was determined, it was not easy to identify the perpetrators because VPbank has a large number of employees spread across the country. The victims were also in many provinces such as Can Tho, Ho Chi Minh City, Dong Nai, Thanh Hoa, etc.

Revealed

According to the police, the clue to solving the case started with the account number that they transferred from the victim's account to appropriate. During the verification process, the police discovered that they transferred money to many accounts, including one of a person named Lam Binh Hon (23 years old, living in Bac Lieu province). The detectives quickly worked with Hon.

Hon said he had made friends with a girl on Zalo named Huong, but his residence was unknown. During the conversation, Huong said she was looking to buy an old ATM card for 2 million VND/card. Seeing that the old ATM card was expensive, Hon agreed to sell his card to Huong.

On August 1, Huong called Hon and said she had forgotten the ATM card that the young man had sold her at home. Huong asked Hon to go to the bank in Bac Lieu and withdraw 35 million VND from the account under Hon's name.

Seeing a pretty girl asking for help, the young man from the West immediately went to the bank to withdraw 35 million VND and gave it to Huong. The girl gave Hon 2 million VND for “coffee money”. From then on, Hon and Huong no longer contacted each other. The detectives continued to verify and work with the account owner to whom the subjects transferred money.

Suspect Phuc

According to their statements, a girl about 25 years old, fair-skinned, speaking with a Southern accent, asked them to borrow their ATM cards to transfer money and then quickly withdraw it. After many days of verification, the police identified the two main suspects as Tran Thi Loan and Phan Van Minh.

This couple used to be employees of FE Credit, a one-member limited liability company under VPBank. Therefore, Loan and Minh were able to access the bank's system to register for the I2B service for customers and then commit the act of appropriation.

On September 7, 2017, the Investigation Police Agency of Bac Lieu Province initiated a criminal case of “Using computer networks, telecommunications networks, and the Internet to commit property appropriation”. Afterwards, the police arrested the four suspects and seized many related exhibits.

At the police station, Minh confessed that after the incident at FE Credit, he and Loan planned to hack into customers' accounts. To avoid detection, Loan bought ATM cards. If they could not buy them, she would ask someone to withdraw money for her. Meanwhile, Phuc and Ngoc pretended to be bank employees to deal with the victims.

Minh directly hacked into VP Bank's FinOne system to register I2B services for customers. After each successful transaction, they split the money among themselves to spend lavishly.

Initially, the police determined that from May to September 2017, these suspects committed 11 cases of property appropriation with a total amount of more than 500 million VND.