They are in the same boat.

At nearly 11pm, the phone rang, startling Hai. Seeing his sister calling, Hai anxiously picked up the phone. But before he could say anything, his sister eagerly said:

- Do you still have money in your account? Can you lend me 20 million? I have urgent business.

- What is the urgent matter that you need so much money for?

- If you have it, just lend it to me and I'll pay you back.

Knowing that his sister was hasty and impulsive in everything she did, especially when it came to money, Mr. Hai had to ask her to find out the truth.

- Why do you need money? If it's reasonable, I'll lend it to you.

- Let me tell you, I'm playing an online game. The last few times I won, I just deposited money according to their instructions and got a profit. This time, I deposited a few more million and continued playing, then they texted me saying I won 300 million, just deposit another 20 million and I'll get it.

Hearing his sister say that, Mr. Hai panicked:

- Oh my god, do you still believe in these online scams?

- Trust me, it's not a scam. Many of my teammates have texted me and received their money.

- Wake up, they are in the same boat.

- If you don't lend me money, then don't be stubborn. I'll go borrow from somewhere else.

Seeing that his sister was still confused, Mr. Hai quickly called Ms. Lam - an acquaintance of the family - to call and advise his sister. A while ago, Ms. Lam was scammed online and lost several million dong. At first, knowing that her brother asked Ms. Lam to call, Xuan spoke vaguely, implying that it was late at night and she should go to bed. But Ms. Lam was very persistent in explaining:

- Xuan, tell me, how can we not know each other, not do anything to help them, but they agree to transfer such a large amount of money to us. If that's true, why don't they transfer 280 million to us, and keep 20 million for the fee, why do they ask us to transfer first? This trick is very old.

Seeing that Xuan seemed to be listening, Ms. Lam continued:

- A while ago, after being scammed out of money, I paid attention to find out and found that, just because of being gullible, some people were scammed like me. Some people were scammed out of large sums of money up to hundreds of millions of dong, even billions. Even if they reported it to the authorities, most people still cannot get their money back. Because the scam lines are very sophisticated, all of them are abroad. The more technology develops, the more sophisticated the online scams become. We have to be diligent in researching and analyzing to avoid being scammed.

- Do you mean I lost all the millions I transferred to them the last time? That's my whole month's salary, Xuan sniffled.

- Oh well! Consider it as if I dropped it. Luckily I understood the problem and didn't transfer any more money. Ms. Lam comforted Xuan and said she would come over tomorrow.