Trick to set up virtual trading floors to "herd chickens" and appropriate billions

On the afternoon of October 25, the Hanoi People's Court sentenced the defendants: Pham Thi Thai (born in 1985, in Hai Ba Trung district) to 8 years in prison; Tong Van Thang (born in 1988, former police officer, in Thanh Xuan district) and Pham Manh Hung (born in 1985, in district 7, Ho Chi Minh City) to 7 years in prison; Nguyen Ngoc Luong (born in 1991, in district 12, Ho Chi Minh City) to 5 years in prison; Vu Dinh Hung (born in 1983, in Go Vap district, Ho Chi Minh City) to 7 years and 6 months in prison for the crime of "Using computer networks, telecommunications networks, and electronic means to commit acts of property appropriation".

According to the indictment, the defendants Vu Dinh Hung and Pham Manh Hung are both knowledgeable and qualified in information technology, securities trading, and foreign exchange.

In early 2018, both sides discussed and agreed to create a trading floor called Rforex similar to international stock and foreign exchange exchanges and called on customers to participate in investing.

Defendant Vu Dinh Hung was responsible for the technical aspects, completing the functions and interface of the software. Meanwhile, Pham Manh Hung sought customers and paid for the costs incurred in creating the trading floor.

Defendant Vu Dinh Hung hired defendant Luong to participate in writing source code for the website Rforex.com and paid him 20 million VND.

To commit the crime, defendant Vu Dinh Hung bought the domain name Rforex.com, rented a server in the US, and filed a profile under the name of the representative company Rforex LTD located in London, UK to carry out procedures to rent Meta Trader 5 (MT5) software. This was to make customers believe that they were trading on a reputable foreign Forex trading floor.

After successfully creating the website, around March 2018, the Rforex floor was put into operation to "herd chickens". After creating an account and depositing money on the website Rforex.com, customers log in to the MT5 software to choose investment product codes such as: stocks, gold, oil, foreign currencies...

According to the accusation, the Rforex floor does not have a counterpart feature to the world market, customers' money is transferred to the electronic wallet managed by the floor owner, but customers do not know and only see the Rforex account being credited with the equivalent amount in USD, making customers mistakenly think that the money is transferred to the Rforex account.

When customers want to withdraw money, they place an order on the website, the withdrawal must be approved by the floor owner. If there is still money in the floor wallet, the money will be transferred through the payment gateway and then transferred to the customer's personal bank account.

Customers also did not know that, when designing and completing the website, the defendants installed features to be able to interfere with all customer account data; change names, passwords, adjust the amount of money deposited into the account; randomly enter commands that lead to "burning" the account...

When the Rforex floor started operating, defendant Thai participated as a level 1 agent (IB). Around July 2018, Ms. Thai agreed to transfer the ownership of the Rforex floor from defendants Vu Dinh Hung and Pham Manh Hung for 20,000 USD.

Ms. Thai was handed over Rforex management accounts with full features that can interfere with all customer account data such as: Automatically adjusting the amount of money deposited into the account, placing trading orders on the account, blocking transmission connections...

After handing over the management of the floor to Ms. Thai, defendants Pham Manh Hung and Vu Dinh Hung were responsible for maintaining the operation of the floor, as well as providing Ms. Thai with technical support when operating the floor.

Defendant Tong Van Thang (Ms. Thai's lover) was the one who provided the customer list information for Ms. Thai to invite to participate. Ms. Thai also hired consultants to advise many customers to invest money in the foreign exchange floor.

In court, many investors said that when they deposited money into their accounts, they were enthusiastically supported by technical staff, but when they wanted to withdraw money, many were notified that their accounts were “burned”. They did not know who to contact to claim their money.

Among the investors, the one who suffered the most damage was Ms. Q. (in Hanoi). From April 16 to November 9, 2020, Ms. Q. deposited more than 8.2 billion VND into her account on this exchange.

Meanwhile, defendants Thai and Thang discussed using administrator accounts to disable access, causing Ms. Q.'s account to stop trading. Defendants Manh Hung and Dinh Hung used their administrator rights to cause Ms. Q.'s account to be "burned".