Lost tens of millions of dong in card when changing to 4G sim
Following the scammer's instructions to upgrade their SIM from 3G to 4G, many customers lost their SIM and tens of millions of dong in their credit cards.
Impersonating a network operator to upgrade to a 4G sim
A FE Credit customer in Hai Duong said she lost her SIM card after being notified of "support for converting SIM card from 3G to 4G" by a person claiming to be a Vinaphone employee.
15:05 on February 22,clientThis is a syntax guide by the bad guys.*091*...#However, she soon discovered that her phone SIM card was lost and urgently requested the network operator to lock the SIM card.
Within half an hour of taking over the SIM, the scammer used the FE Credit app to request a disbursement of more than 37 million VND and had a contract code sent to the SIM from the system. Knowing the incident, she reported the forgery and requested the company tofinancecanceled the disbursement of the 37 million loan and locked the credit card at 4:45 p.m. on the same day, February 22. The finance company's staff informed that they had sent it to the relevant department for urgent cancellation and processing. However, a day later, the fraudster went to the Hoa Binh post office and used a fake ID card to successfully withdraw 37 million.
Similarly, many customers have recently complained to the Competition and Consumer Protection Authority.consumer(Ministry of Industry and Trade) about being appropriated in this way.
On January 18, Ms. NTHM received a call from a person claiming to be a Vinaphone employee, informing her that she was using a 3G package and should switch to 4G. After Ms. M agreed to upgrade her SIM, this person instructed her to enter the string of characters "*938*...#" on the phone and told her to turn it off and restart it 30 minutes later.
However, after restarting the phone, Ms. M found that the SIM card was disabled and had no signal. Two days later, when the SIM card was restored, she received a message from FE Credit informing her that she had a loan balance of more than 49.2 million VND.
Ms. M confirmed that she had never activated her FE Credit credit account, but at the same time the SIM was deactivated, her FE Credit credit card was activated, and an OTP code was sent to the stolen phone number. This subject used the card to pay for transactions at a store in District 10, Ho Chi Minh City.
Similarly, Ms. PTPT in Ho Chi Minh City was robbed of more than 30 million VND from this fake trick. Ms. T said that on the afternoon of February 20, she received a call from the phone number 024.66704573, claiming to be a Mobifone employee, introducing a free SIM exchange and explaining that due to Covid-19, she could not meet in person.
After following the instructions (entering the syntax), Ms. T's SIM also lost signal and was disabled. At the same time, she also received a notification sent to Gmail about the successful password change with the FE Credit application.
After going to the store to request SIM card recovery, Ms. T immediately accessed the FE Credit application to check, the FE Credit credit card limit was only 70,000 VND, generating transactions of nearly 32 million in just 30 minutes since the old phone SIM was deactivated.
FE Credit Finance Company said that recently, many similar cases have been discovered where criminals have taken advantage of the network operator's upgrade of 3G SIMs to 4G SIMs to hack SIMs and then conduct loan transactions via credit cards. FE Credit is actively cooperating to provide information and documents to the authorities to investigate and clarify the issue.
Why is it easy to lose SIM and money?
In these cases,villainThe two steps are to take control of the customer's SIM (by tricking them into upgrading the SIM from 3G to 4G) and to use the same SIM to apply for FE Credit's credit card.
To take control of the SIM, the common pattern is to use convincing reasons such as not being able to meet the customer directly to deliver the SIM to limit contact and spread of Covid-19, urging the victim not to upgrade to 4G will not be able to use the SIM or change the SIM to receive many incentives and promotions... Then, instruct the user to compose the syntax according to the SIM upgrade request.
It is likely that scammers can take advantage of a loophole in the policy of some network operators that allows customers to upgrade to 4G SIM cards at home. The network operator allows customers to buy a blank SIM card at the transaction point without providing an ID card for only 25,000 VND. Then, the customer will enter the serial number of the blank SIM card in the syntax to request a SIM upgrade to complete the upgrade process. The scammers took advantage of this step to take control of the SIM card. Then, they used this SIM card to receive various OTP messages from the scammed subscriber to log into their account and make online payments.
According to the record,Currently, blank SIM cards of network operators are also being sold on many e-commerce sites for less than 50,000 VND.
To ensure safety, Mobifone recommends that all customers increase their level of vigilance and be careful of unusual messages and calls asking to change SIM cards or receive unexpected promotions. When encountering this situation, subscribers need to contact hotline 9090 directly to verify whether the person they are contacting is a Mobifone employee or not. At the same time, customers must absolutely not provide personal information or perform message composition operations in strange syntax. If unfortunately they have followed the request of the bad guys, subscribers must immediately contact Mobifone, the bank and the police to find a timely solution.
And the Department of Competition and Consumer ProtectionrecommendationWhen receiving a message or email containing a strange link, users should not rush to access or click on that link. Fraudsters often create websites with domain names similar to those of reputable, branded businesses in order to intentionally confuse consumers.
At the same time, users also need to increase the security of the SIM. For phone numbers used to authenticate financial transactions, online credit, e-wallets... it is possible to set a PIN code for the SIM according to the instructions of telecommunications businesses./.
