Basing on the information provided by the US government, Vietnamese authorities conducted their own investigation and arrested three men including Thu Phan Dinh, Tran Khanh, and Nguyen Duy Toan, all residents of Vietnam.
According to civil complaints, the three men have operated more than 300 websites with the aim to deceive people to buy scarce products during coronavirus pandemic such as hand sanitizers and antibacterial microfiber cleaning cloths.
Over 7,000 victims in all 50 U.S. states ordered and paid these items from the defendants’ websites; however, they didn’t receive any product.
The defendants allegedly set up hundreds of email accounts and user accounts with a U.S.-based payment processor to carry out the scheme and keep it hidden from law enforcement.
They are also alleged to have listed misleading contact addresses and phone numbers on the websites, causing unaffiliated individuals and businesses in the U.S. to receive numerous complaint calls from the victims who had been defrauded by the scheme.
According to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) investigators, nearly 40,000 fraudulent transactions worth approximately US$975,000.
