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A victim who lost millions of VND by joining in an online sales program is reporting the case to SGGP Newspaper |
Mr. T from District 1 of HCMC has annoyingly shared the story of him being tricked into losing VND300 million (US$12,760) in only a few hours via working for an advertising campaign of C.W.U. Group. In May, he visited the website of this company and saw a link to register for a part-time job of running an ad campaign for a commission of 15- 40 percent (after finishing all tasks).
Being a retiree, he signed up for the position and needed to run the product ad 90 times, preceded by a deposit of VND24 million ($1,020). After 86 successful runs of the ad, he received a message from the system that he should submit another VND245 million ($10.400) for the last two runs to win a larger commission. When he had deposited the money, a new message appeared saying that the last task to fulfill is to send yet another sum of $18,000. At that time, he realized that he had been tricked so far.
Another more serious case is Mr. L from District 10, who lost nearly VND15 billion ($638,000) when following the instructions in a video call by a person saying that he is a police officer. Seeing an arrest warrant for himself and an announcement that he was involved in an economic case, Mr. L panicked. The caller then asked for bank account information verification via a money transfer action. If the account has precise information, the caller will return the amount. Following that instruction, he had already sent nearly VND15 billion in two times to the given account before realizing that it was merely a sly trick.
The Criminal Police Division (PC02 – HCMC Public Security Department) informed that cyber criminals continuously change their tricks from impersonating a post office employee, a police officer, an employee of the procuracy to inviting people to invest in stocks, cryptocurrencies or offering to upgrade mobile phone SIM cards, hiring people in lucrative part-time jobs with high commissions. These law breakers even exploit advanced technologies like Deepfake to create fake clips of people to trick their relatives into sending money to the criminals.
Most victims of those law violators are elderly people, women, foreigners living in Vietnam, and those with weak understanding of the law.
Therefore, PC02 warns that the public should be cautious against strange phone numbers calling them. Under no circumstances should people provide their sensitive information (bank accounts, OTP codes) to strangers. They are advised to report to the police immediately when receiving such suspicious calls.
In related news, ZaloPay has just sent a notice to its users to warn against the newest trick on this platform. Accordingly, criminals might impersonate an employee of ZaloPay to send a message or email to Zalo’s clients, asking about possible issues when using the service. They will then request account information or send a link to steal this valuable information, which will be used later to hack into that account. Hence, Zalo customers should never share their confidential data to strangers.
