Many people in Nghe An lost money due to fake shipper scams.
Currently, in Nghe An, there is a growing trend of people impersonating shippers to call customers to inform them of online orders and request payment to appropriate property.
Many victims fell into the trap
Due to her busy work, Ms. Thai Thi Thanh Thuy, a resident of Kim Truong Thi apartment building, Vo Thi Sau street, Vinh city, often shops online and orders online. Because the shipper mainly delivers during business hours, Ms. Thuy often does not receive the goods directly but asks the shipper to deliver the goods on the first floor of the apartment building, then transfers the money to the shipper, checks and picks up the goods at home later.
In early October 2024, Ms. Thuy placed an order online for 400,000 VND. The next day, a phone number contacted claiming to be the shipper delivering this item, asking Ms. Thuy to pick up the item. Because she was not at home, Ms. Thuy still told the shipper to leave the item on the first floor of the apartment building as before and would transfer the money.
Ms. Thuy said: “Just a few minutes after the delivery, the shipper kept calling and texting me to urge me to transfer money. They said that because they had to deliver many orders, they had to pay quickly to deliver the orders to others. At that time, I was busy and subjective, so I transferred the money to the shipper."
“It is worth mentioning that after the successful transfer, the shipper called back, saying that he had sent the wrong account number, then sent a Facebook link asking me to access it to report to the company for support in refunding the money. At this point, I became suspicious and asked my neighbor to go down to the first floor to check if there were any goods, and as expected, none of my orders were delivered. I immediately questioned him again, but the fake shipper turned off his phone, and I could not get through when I called back…”, Ms. Thuy shared. Because the order was not too large, Ms. Thuy did not report it to the authorities and posted it on social media to warn people.
With a similar trick, Ms. TN - in Hoa Hieu ward, Thai Hoa town was also scammed of an order of over 600,000 VND. Ms. TN said: I ordered online with a total amount of 635,000 VND. The next day, a shipper called and said he was delivering the goods to my house. Because the phone number was strange and the voice was different from the usual shipper, I asked again and this shipper said that he was running today instead of the old shipper who was busy with work.
However, because this person said the correct name of the item and the amount of money that I had ordered from the shop before, I trusted them and told them to deliver the item to my grandparents at home and transferred the correct amount of money. Just a few minutes later, they called back and said that they had sent the wrong account number and asked me to access the link to get support to get my money back. At this point, I was startled to realize the signs of fraud, so I called home, and my family reported that they had not received any order. When I called back this fake shipper, they could not be reached.
Immediately, I contacted the shop where I ordered, the shop owner said that the shop was packing the goods and had not sent them yet. Only then did I know that I had been scammed. The most frustrating thing for me was not the amount of money lost, but that my purchase information and home address had been known to bad people and used to scam me...
Ms. TN, Thai Hoa Town
In fact, in the past month, the form of fraud by pretending to be a shipper has flourished across the country. In Nghe An, many victims from urban to rural areas have also been scammed out of money through this form. There are orders ranging from a few hundred thousand dong to millions of dong. In particular, if you access the link provided by the fake shipper and follow the steps, all the money in your account will be lost.
Raise awareness
According to the police, impersonating a shipper to scam people into transferring money to receive goods is a new form of fraud but has caused many victims to fall into the trap.
In the context of the 4.0 industrial revolution, with the strong development of e-commerce, home delivery and receipt services have also developed strongly. However, this is also a favorable environment and condition for scammers to appropriate property. The most common trick is to take advantage of the psychology of buyers due to subjectivity or not having the conditions to receive the product directly, the bad guys pretend to be delivery staff (shipper) to defraud and appropriate property.
The form of this trick is through online sales on social networking platforms, some scammers organize to collect information of customers who order products from public comments or buy customer information through other information channels. Once they have the information, the scammers will pretend to be delivery people to call for delivery during business hours or when the customer is not at home. If the listener says they cannot receive the goods, the scammers will ask to transfer payment for the order to send the goods to acquaintances or neighbors. Because it is inconvenient to receive the goods and the payment amount is not large, customers easily agree to this request and transfer payment to the account number provided by the subject.
After receiving the money, they may continue to use many reasons such as texting the wrong payment account to threaten to deduct money, then trick the victim into clicking on a link containing "malicious code" to take control of the device and take over the bank account, take over the victim's money and then cut off communication.
In case the recipient says they can receive the goods directly, the subject will immediately hang up because the people they are targeting are often busy and cannot receive the goods directly.
Ms. Nguyen Thi Mai Phuong in Block 12, Truong Thi Ward, Vinh City said: Since the beginning of October, I have received calls from many phone numbers impersonating shippers asking to transfer money. However, because the shipper's voice had both a Northern and Southern accent, and was not from Nghe An, I requested direct delivery. After realizing that they could not trick me, the subjects turned off the phone and blocked the phone number.
Lieutenant Colonel Nguyen Xuan Khoa - Deputy Head of the Department of Cyber Security and High-Tech Crime Prevention, Nghe An Provincial Police said: Currently, the form of fraud impersonating shippers has appeared in many localities, people need to raise their vigilance, do not accept any orders that they have not ordered, do not transfer money or pay for orders without clear information and absolutely do not access any links sent by strangers to avoid "falling into the trap" of criminals. When detecting unusual signs, the transaction must be stopped immediately and information about the incident must be provided to the nearest police force for timely handling.
Currently, postal and delivery companies all have websites and applications to look up bill of lading information, so people should proactively access them to track the order's route, ensuring the correct order was placed before receiving the goods.