Falling into the trap of a new scam 'canceling credit cards'
Following the subject's instructions, Ms. D provided the OTP code sent to her phone to authenticate the request to cancel the card. In fact, these were OTP codes for transferring money to pay for online orders made by the subject to appropriate her money.
On the morning of February 11, the Investigation Police Agency of Mo Duc District, Quang Ngai Province informed about a case of a citizen who followed instructions to cancel a credit card (Mcredit) from a subject claiming to be an employee of a financial company, and was then scammed out of nearly 60 million VND in his credit account.
According to the complaint, on February 3, Ms. D in Mo Duc town (Mo Duc district) received a phone call from a man who introduced himself as an employee of Mcredit Finance Company, informing her that she had registered a credit account at the company but did not use it, and advising and instructing Ms. D to cancel the card to avoid monthly fees.
“Last December, I registered for a credit card from Mcredit finance company with a limit of 60 million VND for online shopping, but I have not used it yet. After hearing the male employee inform me that if I did not cancel the card, I would be charged 350,000 VND per month, so I followed the subject's instructions to cancel the card,” Ms. D added.
Following the subject's instructions, Ms. D composed the syntax "MC MOINTERNET [CCCD NUMBER] [CREDIT CARD ID NUMBER]" and sent it to 8136. At the same time, she was asked 6 times to provide the OTP code sent to her phone to authenticate the request to cancel the card. In fact, these were the OTP codes used to transfer money to pay for online orders made by the subject in order to appropriate her money.
Ms. D said that when she saw her credit account being deducted 6 times in a row with a total amount of 59,532,000 VND, she proactively contacted the subject to ask about the reason for the deduction and was told that "the system will refund after 24 hours". Suspecting that the subject was a scammer, Ms. D called the official hotline of Mcredit Finance Company directly to ask about this issue and only then did she know that she had been scammed.
The case is being investigated by the Investigation Police Agency of Mo Duc District Police in coordination with the Cyber Security and High-Tech Crime Prevention Department of Quang Ngai Provincial Police.
