Stylish old man falls into the trap of the 'dollar witch' when dating online

At the age of 70-80, there are old men and women who still surf the web and play Facebook, but are scammed or trapped by some "fake friends" and lose a large amount of their life savings.

Mrs. Man (74 years old, Hanoi) is respected by her children and grandchildren for her IT skills. In addition to being able to type text at high speed, surf the web, write emails... her chatting ability is also "superb". Her husband passed away a long time ago, her children are secretly happy to see her love to go online, having many friends to chat with here.

At the end of 2015, Ms. Man met a foreign man named Winston Hiddenstone, an American citizen. Winston boasted that he was in a Marine unit stationed in the Arabian Gulf region, and because he was so passionate about his military career, he still had no "landing place".

Be wary of online friend-making and business deals involving laundering dollars.

After chatting online for a while, Winston said he would send a valuable gift box to Mrs. Man. A few days later, someone claiming to be an employee of the express delivery company asked her to transfer $1,500 in service fees. While Mrs. Man was still suspicious, Winston sent her a picture of the gift box along with the shipping number so she could look it up on the Internet.

Finding a match, Mrs. Man sent money to the account number three times as requested. Then, Winston said he was injured and had to be transferred to the US. All matters regarding the package were authorized by attorney Mike Shaw. Mike contacted Mrs. Man and said that because the shipping company did not work well, the package had been transferred to Malaysia. Mike also invited her to the capital of this country to receive it. However, she had to bring 36,000 USD to pay taxes to the local government.

Mrs. Man flew to Malaysia to meet Mike and was invited to join the business. In a hotel room, Mike and another man showed Mrs. Man a stack of blank papers and then took them away. Then he took a bottle out of the closet and dropped the liquid in the bottle onto the stack of blank papers. Mrs. Man saw that just a few minutes later, the initial 5 blank papers had turned into 5 $100 bills. Mike then performed the trick a few more times.

Bringing some banknotes back to Vietnam, Mrs. Man showed them to her nephew and was confirmed to be real money. The next day, she took the family's Land Use Rights Certificate (red book) to the bank to borrow money to transfer to Mike's group.

Ms. Man went to Singapore twice more and transferred hundreds of thousands of dollars to them, hoping that they would sell her the chemicals so that she could earn back the $3 million. In total, she went abroad three times and transferred a total of $6.2 billion VND nine times. However, all she received was just $1,000 and some frivolous packages.

Mr. Tuan confessed that he was scammed out of billions of dong by a girl nicknamed Yen Nhi and her accomplices.

Like Mrs. Man, Mr. Tuan (72 years old, living in Hai Ba Trung district, Hanoi) is still single because his wife passed away nearly 20 years ago. Seeing that he is sad, his children and grandchildren suggested that he go online to read newspapers, and even set up a Facebook page for him to chat with his grandchildren who are studying abroad in Europe.

Suddenly one day, Mr. Tuan called his eldest son and said he wanted to travel abroad for a few weeks. The whole family was surprised, but then supported him. After returning home from the trip, Mr. Tuan seemed excited. About two weeks later, he asked his daughter-in-law to book a plane ticket to Singapore.

His son said that after that trip, a week later he wanted to go again. When his children and grandchildren objected, he got angry, booked his own ticket and went alone.

After this trip, he became suspicious when he saw his father bring 10 bills worth 100 USD and asked his nephew to exchange them into Vietnamese currency. The last time he also gave USD to his father, but the highest denomination was only 10 USD. Seeing something strange, he asked his father many times but he did not say anything. Finally, one day, while waiting for his father to fall asleep, he asked his nephew to "borrow" his laptop. After checking the device, Mr. Hoa and his wife were shocked to learn that their father had a girlfriend in Singapore. Moreover, in the chat, the girlfriend repeatedly told the old man to prepare 30-40,000 USD to do something.

After many days of confiding, Mr. Tuan finally told his children and grandchildren the whole story. In early 2016, he met a girl online, developed feelings for her, and was invited by her lover to visit Singapore. There, the girl confided in him that there was a very grand business deal and invited him to join.

Using the same trick as Mrs. Man above, they boasted that they could bleach blank paper into dollars, and also gave him 10 freshly bleached $100 bills to Vietnam to try spending them.

Taking that amount of dollars to the bank, he exchanged it for more than 20 million VND. Overjoyed, Mr. Tuan immediately collected his savings book, which contained more than 80,000 USD, and gave it to his lover.

Occasionally, the girl texted Mr. Tuan to transfer money for the expenses. Using that trick, the mistress cheated Mr. Tuan 8 times, totaling more than 4 billion VND. After taking all of Mr. Tuan's money, the girl immediately deleted all information and images on the internet...

According to an officer of the Hanoi Criminal Police Department, the “black dollar” scam, also known as “dollar witches,” appeared in Vietnam in Hanoi since 1998, and has developed strongly in the southern region, especially in Ho Chi Minh City. The scammers mainly use the method of making friends through social networks. Through many different tricks, the victims will be persuaded to voluntarily buy cleaning solutions at a very expensive cost (about 30-70,000 USD/bottle) with the promise of sharing the proceeds.

The police explained that the trick of “bleaching” white (or black) paper into real money was that the real dollar bills were first coated with a protective layer of Elmer’s glue, then dipped in iodine solution. When dried, the bills turned black like pieces of construction paper. The blackened bills were then stacked on piles of real construction paper cut to the size of $100 bills.

When performing for their "prey", the scammer uses a "magic" solution to wash the black layer on the outside of the real money, and the money will return to its original state. The cleaning solution is actually just water mixed with crushed vitamin C tablets or cold raspberry juice.

To dispel the victim’s suspicion, the scammers also let the victim take any black paper from the box, then cleverly swap it with real money covered in black. The victim is even encouraged to take the money to the market to check or spend it to ensure it is real.

According to VNE