At the workshop, Lieutenant Colonel Trieu Manh Tung, Deputy Director of the Cybersecurity and High-Tech Crime Prevention Department (A05) under the Ministry of Public Security, stated that online fraud has become an “industry” not only in Vietnam but also worldwide. In recent years, several “criminal corporations” have taken shape.
Recently, A05, in coordination with relevant agencies, has detected numerous organized criminal groups operating on an exceptionally large scale. Some groups comprise thousands of individuals engaged in asset misappropriation through fraud. These groups typically target investment activities, finance, and capital mobilization, as well as fraudulent foreign exchange trading platforms or fake gold trading exchanges.
According to statistics from A05, in 2025, more than 4,200 cases of online fraud were recorded nationwide, with total losses exceeding VND8 trillion (US$304.3 million) during the processing of crime reports and denunciations. High-tech crime has targeted a wide range of citizens, including customers in the securities, banking, and financial sectors.
In addition, online fraudsters are increasingly using a “script-based” method to carry out crimes. This is a form of specialization in which offenders impersonate state agencies and service providers such as electricity companies, tax authorities, and securities firms, among others, in order to obtain personal information and facilitate fraudulent activities.
According to A05 leadership, in some cases, fraudsters are even able to correctly state the full names, addresses, and personal information of the person they call. This creates a false sense of legitimacy, leading victims to believe they are communicating with a state authority, thereby following instructions from the criminals and ultimately having their assets misappropriated.
Lieutenant Colonel Trieu Manh Tung noted that high-tech crime in the financial sector is increasingly shifting from exploiting system security vulnerabilities to directly carrying out asset misappropriation within the systems themselves.
Explaining the reasons why some individuals become victims of AI-enabled fraud, Lieutenant Colonel Trieu Manh Tung stated that many people still lack the skills to recognize scams, making them easily “manipulated” and turning them into weak points that criminals exploit to appropriate assets. In particular, the use of deepfake technology has recently emerged as a prominent tactic, in which fraudsters impersonate state agencies or even relatives to conduct deceptive calls and announcements.
Recently, in Hanoi, a criminal group posing as telecommunications staff has appeared, directly visiting residents’ homes to trick them into signing documents forged in the name of state authorities, thereby facilitating the misappropriation of money from bank accounts.
At present, A05 is researching various artificial intelligence application models to detect and prevent high-tech fraud, particularly in combating crimes in the banking, securities, and financial sectors.
A05 leadership affirmed that in the era of AI, law enforcement forces specialized in high-tech crime prevention, together with financial and banking institutions, need to strengthen research efforts and remove existing "bottlenecks," thereby improving the effectiveness of the fight against online fraud involving the use of artificial intelligence to commit offenses.
