Prosecution of subjects illegally collecting and leasing bank accounts

The Investigation Police Agency of Cao Bang Provincial Police has just issued a Decision to prosecute the accused andDetention Orderagainst Hoang Van Nghia (born in 1989, residing in Giua Street, Nuoc Hai Town, Hoa An District, Cao Bang) for the crime of "Illegally collecting, storing, exchanging, buying, selling, and publicizing information about bank accounts" as prescribed in Article 291 of the Penal Code.

Around May 2023, Hoang Van Nghia was contacted by a woman named Sofia (Vietnamese name is Ngoc) currently living and working in the Philippines via the Telegram application, asking her to open several bank accounts and would pay her 100 USD/account/month.

Subject Hoang Van Nghia.

Finding it attractive, Nghia agreed and followed Ngoc's instructions to register accounts at Techcombank, Vietcombank, and MBbank. After that, Nghia used his citizen ID to buy 3 phone numbers and communicated with Ngoc via the "Group A" group on the Telegram application to get instructions on activation and implementation.

After about 2 months of implementation, seeing Ngoc pay as agreed, Nghia continued to use the names and documents of family members, siblings, relatives, and friends in Hoa An district and Bac Kan province to buy more phone SIMs and open more bank accounts at the 3 above banks to benefit from monthly money from Ngoc.

At the police station, Hoang Van Nghia confessed that since he started renting accounts, he has rented and purchased over 50 accounts from his relatives living in Cao Bang and Bac Kan and used over 100 different accounts. After deducting the account rental fee, Nghia earned from Ngoc 60 - 70 million VND/month.

Based on the collected evidence, the Criminal Police Department coordinated with the Cyber ​​Security and High-Tech Crime Prevention Department of Cao Bang Provincial Police to check computer software information, temporarily seized objects and documents: 2 computers; 123 SIM cards, phone SIM covers; 58 ATM cards; 16 phones; 1 tablet used by Nghia for the purpose of attaching SIM cards to receive OTP codes and transferring these codes to foreign subjects; 123,785,000 VND and many objects and gold and silver metal jewelry.

With 58 bank cards temporarily seized by the Investigation Agency during the search, it was determined that Nghia committed the crime of illegally collecting, storing, exchanging, buying, selling, and publicizing information about bank accounts as prescribed in Article 291 of the Penal Code.

Based on the results of the statements of 9 bank accounts collected by Nghia, the police initially determined that from November 2022 to April 2023, the amount of money transferred through these accounts was more than 978 billion VND. Currently, the case is being further investigated by the Provincial Police Investigation Agency.