Breaking up a large-scale money laundering and illegal foreign currency transfer ring
The Investigation Police Agency has prosecuted and temporarily detained 13 subjects. 12 locations were searched, and many related documents and exhibits were seized.
On April 27, information from the Ho Chi Minh City Police Department of Investigation said that they had just dismantled a criminal ring with foreign elements that was laundering money and illegally transferring foreign currency across the border on an extremely large scale.
The Investigation Police Agency has decided to prosecute 7 suspects for "Money laundering" and 6 others for "Illegally transporting currency across the border". Among them, there are 2 suspects of Nigerian nationality.
According to initial information, in early April, Ho Chi Minh City Police received information that a company headquartered in Ukraine was defrauded by some unknown individuals. The method of the group of anonymous individuals was to use an email address similar to the email address of the partner company in Korea to contact and exchange with the company in Ukraine about the contents related to the economic contract transaction being carried out.
This led the company in Ukraine to mistakenly transfer money to a Vietnamese bank account. The verification process showed that the money was then quickly transferred to many other accounts and then appropriated.
Based on preliminary information and the assessment that this is a criminal gang with foreign subjects liaising with Vietnamese people in the country to commit illegal activities, the Ho Chi Minh City Police Department assigned the Office of the Criminal Police Department (PC01) to investigate and verify.
Following the money flow and applying other professional measures, the Investigation Police Agency identified important links in this criminal ring, such as: Mai Tra My (32 years old), Mai Vu Minh (29 years old, both from Dak Lak), Le Thi Tham (48 years old, residing in Hoc Mon district), Nguyen Thi Huong (34 years old, from Nam Dinh), Nguyen Thi Thanh Thuy (35 years old, residing in Hoc Mon district), Okoye Christinan Ikechukwy (39 years old) and Eneh Davidson Caleb (28 years old, both of Nigerian nationality).
After collecting sufficient evidence, the Investigation Police Agency recently prosecuted and temporarily detained 13 subjects as mentioned above. The police searched 12 locations and seized many related documents and exhibits.
In particular, when searching the house of Nguyen Thi Thanh Thuy and Eneh Davidson Caleb, the police seized 234 seals of ghost companies established for criminal use.
Searching the Kingfood Bird's Nest facility (No. 405A and 407A Le Dai Hanh Street, Ward 11, District 11) owned by Nguyen Thi Thu Thuy (41 years old, residing in Tan Phu District), Pham Van Nhan (44 years old, residing in District 11) and Duc Long Gold Shop (No. 296 Pham Van Hai Street, Ward 5, Tan Binh District) owned by Do Viet Dai (53 years old, residing in Tan Binh District), Nguyen Thi Kim Ngan (47 years old, from Dak Lak), the police also seized more than 9 billion VND, more than 1.5 million USD and other foreign currencies.
Methods of transnational crime groups
Up to now, the Investigation Police Agency has clarified the methods of this criminal group with foreign elements. Specifically, they hacked into the emails of companies that were exchanging about transactions and economic contracts; created fake emails with similar names, only one character different from the email of the victim's partner company to contact, stating objective reasons to change the transaction account.
At the same time, foreign subjects directed subjects in Vietnam to establish many "ghost" companies with names similar to the partner companies' names to open foreign currency accounts in USD and VND. Then, they provided the account numbers of the "ghost" companies so that the victims would mistakenly transfer money into them.
Upon receiving money into the USD foreign currency account, the legal entities of the company quickly complete the procedures to convert it to VND and transfer it to the VND account; then transfer it to the accounts of other individuals in Vietnam.
Finally, they withdrew cash and brought it to Kingfood Bird's Nest Facility of Nguyen Thi Thu Thuy, Pham Van Nhan and Duc Long Gold Shop of Do Viet Dai, Nguyen Thi Kim Ngan, to carry out the service of illegally converting it into USD to Cambodia for their accomplices.
The investigation results determined that the group of subjects had directly or hired people to establish more than 250 "ghost" companies to open accounts under the guise of legal entities. And during the investigation, the subjects admitted to opening more than 700 personal accounts to serve criminal activities.
Initial investigation shows that the total illegal transactions of Duc Long gold shop is about 13,000 billion VND.
It is worth mentioning that, from the information source, after only 2 weeks of investigation, the Ho Chi Minh City Police Department has successfully dismantled a large-scale organized crime ring with foreign elements. Currently, PC01 Department is continuing to investigate and clarify the roles of related subjects.
