Woman in Nghe An was tricked into transferring 2.2 billion VND to receive 20 million USD from the Syrian battlefield

Gullibility and the price of 2.2 billion VND

As a woman experiencing difficulties in her marriage, when receiving a friend request and special attention from a foreign man via Facebook, Ms. Le Thi H (Tuong Duong, Nghe An) did not hesitate to agree to be friends and chat. From the initial questions and encouragement, the feelings between the two gradually became close when the foreign man showed sincerity and truly shared and cared about Ms. H's feelings and difficulties.

After nearly 4 months of conversation, the foreign man confided that he was fighting in Syria and had picked up a box of dollars. Because of difficulties in transporting it back to the US for consumption, he was forced to send it through an intermediary country in Asia. And Mrs. H was the person he trusted to deliver the box of money. To gain trust, the subject also promised that after the war ended, he would return to Vietnam to buy a house, settle down and take Mrs. H to live with him.

The victim reported to the investigation agency. Photo: Thanh Quynh

Two days later, a woman called Ms. H, claiming to be an employee of Tan Son Nhat Airport, and informed Ms. H that she had a package sent from abroad. However, to receive the package, Ms. H had to pay 40 million VND in shipping fees to a bank account provided by the “female employee.”

Without hesitation, Ms. H immediately used all the money she had saved for a long time to transfer to the above account. 3 days later, the other woman announced that the airport security staff had discovered that the above package contained 20 million USD. If she wanted to receive the money, Ms. H had to pay a fine of 200 million VND to the airport. Eager to end the matter, Ms. H secretly mortgaged her family's red book to borrow money and transferred it to the subject.

For a long time after that, the above subject continuously called and demanded that Ms. H continuously pay fees such as parking fees, insurance fees, etc. to the airport, each time amounting to hundreds of millions of dong.

Because she thought she was still “at a good deal” when she could own 20 million dollars, Ms. H not only mortgaged her family’s red book but also used the excuse of needing business capital to mortgage her parents’ red book, and even borrowed money at high interest rates to collect money to transfer to the above subject. As of December 20, the total amount of money Ms. H had transferred was up to 2.2 billion VND.

A series of invoices worth hundreds of millions of dong that Ms. H transferred to the scammer. Photo: Thanh Quynh

When she had no more money to transfer, Ms. H could not contact the woman who claimed to be airport security. Realizing that she had been scammed, Ms. H wrote a complaint to Nghe An Provincial Police.

Receiving the complaint, Mr. Ha Huy Duc - Captain of the High-Tech Crime Prevention Team, Criminal Police Department of Nghe An Province Police said that Ms. H is just one of hundreds of victims of fraud and property appropriation through social networks in our province in recent years. It is estimated that each year in Nghe An there are about 10 cases of fraud with the above trick, causing losses of over 4 billion VND. Through verification, most of the masterminds are mostly foreigners of African origin, colluding with Vietnamese people to conduct the fraud.

In addition to the above tricks, high-tech scammers also use many other ways to appropriate victims' assets.

Exposing scams

In the first months of 2018, many people in Nghi Loc district were extremely confused when scammers used messengers of relatives working abroad, asking them to urgently transfer money to a number of accounts given by the subject. Only after the money was transferred did the victims realize they had been scammed.

Recognizing that this was a group of subjects using high technology to commit fraud, in March 2018, Nghi Loc District Police established Project 418L. On April 17, in Da Nang City, the Project Board arrested Phan Anh Tuan and Ho Van Duc (both residing in Trieu Thuong Commune, Trieu Phong District, Quang Tri) while committing fraud in Hoa Khanh Bac Ward, Da Nang City.

The subjects confessed that they had tried to hack Facebook passwords of people living abroad and used the messenger application to send messages to relatives in Vietnam asking to transfer money because they were in urgent need. Many families lacked knowledge and did not verify and were scammed by Tuan and Duc. The two subjects successfully carried out many scams involving victims in 10 provinces and cities, including Nghe An, with a total amount of more than 1.5 billion VND.

With the same trick, in 2018 alone, there were 30 cases in Nghe An province, the amount of money appropriated was up to tens of billions of dong.

Previously, around the end of 2017, the Criminal Police Department, Nghe An Provincial Police received 9 criminal complaints from people reporting that many subjects impersonating police or telecommunications bill collectors had defrauded and appropriated property.

Criminals hacked Facebook to defraud people of money after being arrested. Photo: Archive

Initially, the callers claimed to be telecommunications officers, informing the landline subscribers that they owed money for calls to foreign countries such as the US, Taiwan, Canada, etc. According to the usual reaction, as soon as people explained that they did not make the above calls, the callers would connect to the Ministry of Public Security's "hotline" to report. After that, a caller pretended to be a police captain and informed the victims that they were involved in a drug and money laundering ring.

Then this person instructed the victims to transfer a large amount of money into the account for investigation, causing the victims to panic and follow their request. With this method, the total amount of money the victims were robbed of amounted to nearly 2 billion VND.

After investigation, on September 1, 2017, the Criminal Police Department issued an arrest warrant for Nguyen Huu Thu (born 1991) and Pham Dinh Luan (born 1993), both residing in My Huong commune, Luong Tai district, Bac Ninh province, while they were renting a room in Hung Yen province.

At the investigation agency, the two subjects admitted to using voice over internet protocol (VoIP), displaying "virtual" phone numbers with the same prefix as the police's 113 number. Subjects Thu and Luan were hired by Pham Dinh Phi to open or collect bank cards for 1 million VND/card. Then, they withdrew large amounts of money from the above accounts and transferred them to a third subject. For each withdrawal, Thu and Luan received 20% according to the previous agreement. Within more than 1 month, Thu and Luan withdrew from bank cards to transfer to Phi a total of more than 2 billion VND.

High-tech fraud activities are becoming more and more sophisticated and complex. For these types of fraud, the subjects often use fake Facebook accounts and junk SIM cards to contact the victims, making it difficult to investigate. Or when being investigated, the criminals often flee abroad, making it difficult to arrest, causing many people to lose their vigilance or be gullible and lose large sums of money.