Scammers swindle hundreds of millions of VND by impersonating Facebook sellers.

On March 31, the Hanoi City Police Investigation Agency arrested two individuals, Nguyen Duc Anh (born in 1992, Hoa Lu, Ninh Binh) and Nguyen The Dung (born in 1993, Hoa Lu, Ninh Binh), to clarify their involvement in the crime of "Using computer networks, telecommunication networks, the Internet, or digital devices to commit acts of property appropriation."

Previously, the High-Tech Crime Prevention and Control Police Department (PC50) of the Hanoi City Police discovered a group of individuals impersonating reputable online shops on Facebook to trick buyers into transferring money to their accounts, which they then misappropriated.

During the investigation, PC50 identified many people who lost money buying handbags from the Facebook account "Trịnh Thu Huyền." One victim transferred up to 37 million VND to the scam group to purchase handbags.

On March 26th, the investigating agency summoned Ms. NTPT (a student at a college in Hanoi) for questioning. Ms. NTPT is one of the account holders whose names appeared on the account to which the victims of the scam transferred money.

During the investigation, Ms. T stated that she lent her bank account number to her cousin, Nguyen The Dung, to transfer money into his account starting in February 2015. After a customer transferred 10 million VND to the account, Dung called and asked her to transfer 9.8 million VND to another account under the name Tung. Dung gave her the remaining amount, saying it was a transfer fee.

Immediately afterwards, PC50 established a task force in coordination with the Ninh Binh Provincial Police to summon Nguyen The Dung and Nguyen Duc Anh to the investigative agency for questioning.

Through questioning the suspects, the investigating agency initially determined that around November 2014, Duc Anh invited The Dung to search the internet for ways to create fake Facebook accounts of reputable online shops with the aim of defrauding and stealing money from online customers.

Subsequently, Duc Anh and Dung created a fake Facebook account named "Trinh Thu Huyen" that resembled the real "Trinh Thu Huyen" Facebook page (which was a real online handbag shop). They copied all the information, images, addresses, and posts from the original Facebook account and posted them on the fake account. Furthermore, the perpetrators used the fake Facebook account to befriend potential handbag buyers from the real "Trinh Thu Huyen" Facebook friend list.

After creating fake Facebook accounts that looked authentic, the scammers tricked customers who wanted to buy handbags into transferring money to one of five borrowed accounts. Once the customers transferred the money, they immediately withdrew it.

Duc Anh confessed that, because he had lost his identity card and hadn't had time to get a new one, he conspired with Dung to borrow ATM accounts from acquaintances to receive money from the victims.

Initially, investigators determined that, using the aforementioned methods, Nguyen Duc Anh and Nguyen The Dung embezzled over 100 million VND and used the money for personal expenses.

The Hanoi City Police are currently continuing to expand their investigation into the case.

According to Vietnam+