Female scammer uses "buy high, sell low" tactic to defraud people on social media.
Through social media, Ho Thi Hoa (Nghe An) repeatedly defrauded people by buying their agricultural products at high prices and then selling them to others at low prices in order to misappropriate their assets.
The People's Procuracy of Huong Son district has just signed a decision approving the indictment of Ho Thi Hoa (born in 1995), residing in Hamlet 7, Nam Anh commune, Nam Dan district (Nghe An province) for the crime of "Fraudulent appropriation of property".
According to the investigating agency, Ho Thi Hoa, wanting money for personal expenses, conceived the idea of defrauding others. Through Facebook, Hoa created four accounts named "Dang Kim Ngan," "Nguyen Thu Ha," "Dien Gia Dung," and "Thao Tran" using fake personal information and then joined online groups for buying and selling goods.
Ho Thi Hoa at the investigative agency.
Hoa sought out people who wanted to buy goods and people who sold those goods. Taking advantage of buyers' desire for cheap prices and sellers' preference for high prices, Hoa offered lower selling prices and higher buying prices than the market rate. Furthermore, Hoa hired people to forge images of money transfer transactions to sellers to gain the customers' trust and have the goods delivered to the address Hoa requested.
After agreeing on the price, Hoa asked the seller to ship the goods to the buyer's address. The buyer paid Hoa upon receiving the goods, but Hoa not only failed to pay the seller but also blocked all communication with the victim.
Using the aforementioned methods, from June 17th to August 7th, Ho Thi Hoa defrauded five victims of over 19.3 million VND, earning an illegal profit of 15.56 million VND.
On October 9th, the Investigation Police Department of Huong Son District Police issued a decision to prosecute Ho Thi Hoa for the crime of "Fraudulent appropriation of property" as stipulated in Clause 1, Article 174 of the Penal Code.
The case is currently being finalized for processing according to the law.
