'Falling into trap' of joining Rforex floor, woman had nearly 8 billion VND stolen

On May 15, the Hanoi People's Court opened a first-instance criminal trial for the case of "Using computer networks, telecommunications networks, and electronic means to commit acts of property appropriation". The group of defendants includes: Pham Thi Thai (born in 1985, residing in Hai Ba Trung district, Hanoi); Tong Van Thang (born in 1988, residing in Thanh Xuan district, Hanoi); Pham Manh Hung (born in 1985, residing in District 7, Ho Chi Minh City); Nguyen Ngoc Luong (born in 1991, residing in District 12, Ho Chi Minh City) and Vu Dinh Hung (born in 1983, residing in Go Vap district, Ho Chi Minh City). Before committing this case, in 2019, Vu Dinh Hung was sentenced to 42 months in prison for the same crime.

According to the indictment, in March 2018, Vu Dinh Hung, Pham Manh Hung and Nguyen Ngoc Luong created the Rforex trading floor, similar to a network dedicated to international stock and foreign exchange trading floors. Vu Dinh Hung was responsible for the technical aspects, completing the functions, and trading the software. Pham Manh Hung searched for customers and paid for the incurred costs. After that, Vu Dinh Hung bought the domain name Rforex.com, rented a server in the US, and filed a profile under the name of the representative company Rforex LTD (address in London, UK) to carry out procedures to rent the Mta Trader 5 (MT5) software to make customers believe that they were trading on an international floor.

The defendants at trial.

In particular, the floor owner who manages the admin accounts can interfere with all customer account data, change the name and password, adjust the amount of money deposited into the account, randomly trade orders that lead to "burning" the account, block the connection line...

In fact, the Rforex floor does not have a counterparty feature to the world market. Customers' money is transferred to the e-wallet managed by the floor owner. However, customers only see their accounts credited with USD, making them mistakenly think that the transaction is on an international floor.

After successfully creating the website, around March 2018, the Rforex floor was put into operation. The group of defendants agreed on a sharing ratio of 60%, the remaining 40% was divided among agents (abbreviated as IB) to develop customers, of which Pham Thi Thai was an agent.

Thai used Anna's name, rented a headquarters, posted recruitment and training information to attract customers to join the Rforex floor through the name of Five Tech Media Company Limited. Thai stipulated that the employee's commission would be from 1-5% on the amount of money customers deposited.

In July 2018, Thai officially joined Vu Dinh Hung's group as a floor administrator. Tong Van Thang (Thai's lover) provided information about the customer list for Thai to invite to join.

Among Thai's customers are Ms. Hoang Thuy Q (born in 1973, residing in Nam Tu Liem district, Hanoi, a former colleague of defendant Tong Van Thang) and Ms. Lang Thi N (born in 1991, residing in Long Bien district, Hanoi).

In April 2020, Thang introduced Ms. Q to the reputable Rforex floor and Thang participated in the high-profit business. Thang showed Ms. Q his account with a balance of 52,025.68 USD, making Ms. Q trust him and open a forex trading account. From April 16, 2020 to November 9, 2020, Ms. Q deposited more than 8.2 billion VND into the above account to play forex. Thai and Thang discussed using the administrator account to turn off access, causing Ms. Q's account to stop trading. Pham Manh Hung and Vu Dinh Hung used the administrator rights, using 86 orders, causing Ms. Q's account to "burn". The amount of money Ms. Q had appropriated was more than 7.8 billion VND. When Ms. Q asked, Thai blamed the system error due to the influence of the US Presidential election, then Thai cut off contact with Ms. Q.

Similarly, Ms. N also joined the Rforex floor since June 2019, depositing more than 394 million VND into her account. But less than a month later, Ms. N could not access her account.

Through verification, on April 2, 2021, the Department of Foreign Affairs (Ministry of Public Security) provided information from the UK National Crime Agency - NCA showing that Rforex is a private company directed by Vu Dinh Hung.

In addition, Vu Dinh Hung, Pham Manh Hung and Nguyen Ngoc Luong, along with a number of other individuals, created and operated forex floors on other websites such as Vistaforex.com, Exswiss.com, Yailbrokien.com, Fmarkets.com... The investigation agency has searched for customers whose money was stolen on the above trading floors but has not yet determined who the victims are. Therefore, the investigation agency has separated the documents for later processing.

The trial of this case is scheduled to last two days.