Nghe An arrests nearly 100 subjects of transnational high-tech fraud, appropriating more than 2,000 billion VND

Recently, the situation of organized, transnational crime using cyberspace to commit fraud and property appropriation continues to develop in a very complex and sophisticated manner with an increasingly expanding scale and organization. Many people from Vietnam are sent abroad for training and guidance to commit fraud against the people in the country, causing great property damage to the people and leading to serious consequences in society.

Identifying this as a burning issue, greatly affecting people's lives and causing public outrage, the leaders of the Provincial Police have directed forces under the Nghe An Police to actively deploy all aspects of professional work, proactively grasp the situation, investigate, arrest, and strictly handle acts ofexploit cyberspaceto commit crimes.

Through professional work, the Criminal Police Department of Nghe An Police discovered a transnational high-tech organized crime gang led and operated by foreigners with the participation of many Vietnamese people. This gang has 2 branches with headquarters located in Myanmar and the Philippines.

Faced with the above situation, the leaders of Nghe An Provincial Police directly directed the Criminal Police Department of Nghe An Police to preside over and coordinate with relevant units to establish a special project to focus on fighting, clarifying, arresting, and eliminating the above criminal organization.

During the verification process, the Investigation Committee determined that each branch in the above group was assigned 01 Vietnamese subject to operate and manage according to the company model, with a very tight connection, scale, organization, division of labor, and sophisticated hierarchy according to each department, and was paid according to each rank for easy operation and management. When participating in the fraud, the subjects were all "trained" according to the fraud scenario and the scenario of dealing with the authorities when arrested. The total number of subjects participating in the criminal organization of fraud at both branches was up to more than 300 people.

These subjects are trained and instructed on how to scam according to the scenario of "carrying out the task of transferring money to buy goods on e-commerce platforms to receive huge commissions", or the scenario of emotional scams - making friends, dating is built and designed by the scammers according to a very strict step-by-step process to create trust, thereby manipulating and leading the psychology of the victims.

First, the company provides employees with fake Facebook accounts (usually women, with beautiful pictures, posting about their jobs, income and well-off lives) to search for successful, wealthy men's accounts, then make friends, send messages to get acquainted to build feelings, then the subjects will guide the victims to make friends via Viber accounts for convenience in talking. From Viber, after talking for about 02 days, the subjects will invite the victims to invest in the form of asking the victims to perform tasks to help the "character" to receive gifts from the e-commerce platform (in fact, this is just a ghost e-commerce platform set up by the subjects to carry out fraud).

For the first tasks, the victims will receive “commissions and principal” to create trust. Once the customers trust and follow, the subjects will continue to ask the customers to perform more tasks, the amount of money the customers need to pay for the product will increase, but they will not be refunded due to “system errors, syntax errors”, asking the victims to continue to deposit more money to perform more tasks but all of them will be appropriated.

To carry out the fraud and expand their operations, the criminal gang members continuously recruited people from Vietnam to Myanmar and the Philippines to carry out the fraud. The subjects flew to Thailand legally, then from Thailand illegally crossed the border to Myanmar or flew directly from Vietnam to the Philippines to join the criminal organization.

During the process of verification, monitoring, and synchronous application of professional measures until June 23, 2025, under the direct direction of the Provincial Police Department, the Criminal Police Department of Nghe An Police presided over and coordinated with the Ministry of Public Security's Professional Departments, Provincial Police Departments, Police of provinces, cities, border gates across the country and related units to mobilize hundreds of officers and soldiers to establish many working groups to successfully break the case, simultaneously arrest and urgently search nearly 100 subjects in Nghe An and many provinces and cities across the country, including many subjects arrested after entering Vietnam.

The police identified Phan Dinh Thinh (born in 1995) and Le Thi Tra (born in 1999), both residing in Hung Dao commune, Hung Nguyen district, as two of the leaders of a transnational fraud ring. Initially, the suspects confessed to having committed hundreds of frauds to appropriate property from Vietnamese people across the country, estimated at more than 2,000 billion VND.

In particular, with the above tricks, this criminal organization has manipulated psychology and in a short period of only 1-2 days, there were victims in Ho Chi Minh City who were scammed out of more than 41 billion VND or in Vinh City, Nghe An Province, there were also victims who were scammed out of up to 15.4 billion VND.

Currently, the Provincial Police Investigation Agency has prosecuted and detained the suspects for the crime of "Fraudulent appropriation of property", at the same time continue to verify, investigate, clarify, fight to expand the project and handle the remaining subjects in accordance with the law.