A restaurant was scammed of nearly 240 million VND by ordering a party over the phone.

On the morning of April 30, Ms. NTBH - accountant of An Moc Restaurant (Ward 4, Da Lat City, Lam Dong Province), received a call from number 0325565149 ofthe man named Hai, working in a State agency in Di Linh district (Lam Dong). This person said he knew a shareholder of the restaurant but was unable to contact this shareholder so he called the restaurant directly to book a party for an important group of guests of about 25 people.

After the two sides agreed on the dishes, the person calling himself Hai asked the restaurant to prepare Twomey wine as a drink. Because she had contacted many places but did not have this type of wine, Ms. H called the person named Hai. This person introduced Ms. H as a dealer specializing in providing Twomey wine, along with the phone number 0328513373 for contact. The restaurant staff contacted this phone number and connected to Zalo for convenient communication.

The scammer sent fake money transfer messages to gain the trust of the restaurant accountant.

Then, a man named Hai called Ms. H and said that his boss needed to buy ginseng as a gift for a customer. Ms. H said that the restaurant would only buy it for her, and at the same time, texted her account number and asked the man named Hai to transfer money to buy ginseng for the customer.

A few minutes later, the person named Hai continuously sent photos of the successful transfer transaction to the restaurant. Ms. H checked and saw the transaction photo of the money being successfully transferred to the Agribank account, but still did not see a message notifying that the account had money.

An Moc Restaurant, the place targeted by the scammer.

However, because the restaurant was crowded at that time and it was a holiday, Ms. H thought that the network might be congested, so the bank's message had not arrived yet.

The above misunderstanding caused Ms. H to transfer nearly 240 million VND to buy wine and ginseng to account number 1023933138 under the name of Duong Ngoc Khanh (Vietcombank).

After that, Ms. H continuously called to urge the delivery partner, but the seller asked to transfer an additional 100 million VND to the invoice. Only then did Ms. H realize she had been scammed.