Young man hunts for love online, blindly transfers half a billion without meeting in person

Tan Binh District Police, Ho Chi Minh City has just issued decisions to prosecute the case, prosecute the accused and execute the arrest warrant for the group of subjects including: Truong Van Ly (23 years old), Tong Van Sua (29 years old) and Huynh Chieu Phu (21 years old, all from Can Tho, temporarily residing in the locality) for the act of "extortion of property". The victim who was deceived and blackmailed is Mr. K. (28 years old, from Dak Lak).

According to the investigation, in early August, Mr. K. went to a porn website to find girls' phone numbers for the purpose of... finding sex. Then, Mr. K. chatted on social networks with a person nicknamed mess, introducing himself as a broker for girls for Mr. K. to have fun without any strings attached, but asked him to transfer a brokerage fee of 700,000 VND.

The group of people who hunted for nearly half a billion dong from a young man who hunted for love online, when they were arrested at the police station.

Mess introduced Mr. K. to a girl. She lured Mr. K. into recharging his phone many times with a total of 4 million VND and promised to meet but then disappeared.

A few days later, a person nicknamed Suong Mai contacted Mr. K. via Zalo, saying that he should not do business with Mess anymore because this person was a scammer. Suong Mai said she would introduce Mr. K. to other girls, asking him to transfer 1.5 million VND as a brokerage fee.

Suong Mai introduced Mr. K. to a person with the nickname "Thanh Thanh" online. Under the seduction tricks of Suong Mai and Thanh Thanh, Mr. K. fell into the trap, continuously lending Thanh Thanh money through his Momo wallet account even though they had never met.

Continuously tricked into transferring money without meeting in person

The reason Thanh Thanh gave was difficult circumstances, being scammed in real estate transactions, being blackmailed by subjects with sex clips, being imprisoned... From there, Mr. K. transferred money to Thanh Thanh and Suong Mai through the bank accounts provided by these people or through the Momo wallet account.

During that process, Mr. K. sent nude clips to Thanh Thanh to watch. When the total amount of money lent reached 350 million VND, Mr. K. still had not met his lover once, so he asked for the money back.

Thanh Thanh announced that she had arranged to pay Mr. K. but someone else was holding it in their hands, asking him to transfer 70 million VND to the person holding the money, then she would return the money to him in full and even delete his nude clips. If Mr. K. did not comply with the request, Thanh Thanh would post the clips on social media.

Mr. K. was afraid so he agreed to the request and transferred the money. But the anonymous subjects continued to threaten Mr. K. with his sex clips. With his finances exhausted, Mr. K. changed his phone number and locked his social media accounts.

But the subjects made friends with Mr. K's acquaintances. They "showed" Mr. K's acquaintances some nude photos of him to put pressure on him. Finally, the anonymous subjects asked Mr. K to pay an additional 15 million VND to free him.

Believing this was the last time, Mr. K. agreed. The group asked him to come to the Nhieu Loc Canal area in Tan Binh District to make the transaction. However, still afraid of the escalating intimidation, Mr. K. quietly reported it to the police.

At the end of October, Mr. K. arrived at the meeting place. A young man, later identified as Tong Van Sua, approached him. Sua opened her phone to show Mr. K. 2 nude clips of him and received 15 million VND. At this time, detectives from Tan Binh District Police arrived and arrested him.

From Sua's statement, the police investigated and arrested Ly and Phu. Among them, Ly and Phu played the leading role, pretending to be girls and brokers on social networks to trap Mr. K. As for Sua, she had just joined the gang and was asked by Phu to collect 15 million VND from Mr. K.

The total amount of money that the group of people swindled and extorted from Mr. K was up to 430 million VND.