Law

Online fraud group with 6-step scenario to lure victims into trap

DT June 16, 2024 15:00

Although young and healthy, 13 young men in Hai Duong and Hanoi refused to do business and instead formed a group and created a 6-step scenario to scam people by announcing that they would give away iPhones.

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Illustration

Team up

In early April 2023, Tran Tien Thanh (born in 1998 in Tho Xuan commune, Dan Phuong district, Hanoi) invited 12 people to form a group to commit fraud to get money to spend. Among them, there were 2 subjects in Hai Duong: Vu Ba Duong (born in 2002 in Ninh Hai commune, Ninh Giang), Do Duy Khanh (born in 1996, residing in Nguyen Trai ward, Hai Duong city). The remaining 10 subjects are all in Hanoi city. The subjects rented a house at No. 3, alley 15, lane 61, Lac Trung street, Vinh Tuy ward, Hai Ba Trung district (Hanoi city) to set up a "base" to together commit fraud to appropriate people's money through the social network Facebook.

To successfully carry out the scams, the group developed a plan and assigned specific tasks to each member. The subjects created fake Facebook accounts posing as mobile phone stores, posting articles on Facebook groups with the content of giving away free iPhone brand mobile phones.

Along with that, they built a detailed, methodical scenario with 6 steps to gradually lure people into the trap. That is, asking the victim to pay 200,000 VND for the invoice fee, then making a fake invoice with the information provided by the victim and taking a photo to send back to them. Step 2 asked the victim to pay 500,000 VND to complete the shipping procedure, if they did not agree, they would be notified that they could be fined 35 million VND for canceling the order. Step 3 asked the victim to pay 1.5 million VND for the phone warranty fee (if anyone had any questions, they would ask someone else to pretend to be a phone company employee to call the victim and ask for the money). Step 4 requires the victim to pay a deposit of 4 million VND before shipping the goods due to the large value of the order (the person directly contacting the victim will ask someone else to pretend to be a delivery staff or a post office staff to call and inform the victim about the deposit fee for the order). Step 5 requires the victim to pay an amount of 5 million VND or more with the reason that the goods are being inspected by the tax authority so the money must be paid to receive the goods, or the money must be paid to send to the treasury to make a file to refund the amount paid (at this time, another person will pretend to be a tax officer or treasury officer to call the victim to exchange information). Step 6 requires the victim to pay more money, the amount of additional money depends on the reaction of each victim (if the victim trusts the transfer, they will continue to use the reason that the file is faulty and the limit must be increased to ask the victim to transfer more money until the victim stops transferring).

When posting content about giving away free iPhone brand mobile phones, if someone comments, the subjects will send a message via Messenger application to talk directly and ask for personal information and contact phone number. Then, they create an iPhone transfer form with the recipient's information as the victim's information to create trust. The subjects will continue to carry out the 6-step scenario they have built to scam.

When paying them, victims are instructed to do it in two ways: buy a phone card, take a photo of the card's serial number and send it to them, or transfer it to the accounts they provide.

55 people fell into the trap

In each scam, Thanh and his group agreed to divide the stolen money according to the following ratio: The person who directly carried out the scam received 50-60% of the stolen money, while the others received it depending on their role in each case. Every week, Thanh would pay the money to the people in the group in cash.

With the above sophisticated methods and tricks, many people have innocently fallen into Thanh's group's scam trap. During the investigation, the Provincial Police Investigation Agency clarified that a total of 55 people in many provinces and cities across the country were scammed by Thanh's group from April to July 2023. The total amount of money that people were robbed of was nearly 518 million VND.

One of the typical cases of people falling into their scam trap was on June 24, 2023, when Ms. Nguyen Thi NA in Chi Linh City used Facebook and saw the Facebook account "Nhat Ha" used by a subject in the group posted an article giving away 100 phones. Ms. NA texted to receive the phone and received a notification from the above account confirming that she had won an iPhone 14 Pro Max 128Gb. Following the steps the subject requested, Ms. NA transferred 2.1 million VND to them. After realizing that she had been scammed and had her property appropriated, Ms. NA reported it to the police.

During the investigation and settlement of the case, the above subjects and people with related rights and obligations paid nearly 518 million VND to remedy the consequences of the case. The case was completed by the Provincial People's Procuracy and prosecuted before the Provincial People's Court for trial on the crime of fraud and appropriation of property.

Through this incident, the authorities advise people to be vigilant with gift giving on social networks to avoid being scammed. When receiving information of this type, people need to research carefully before intending to transfer money to others.

DT
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Online fraud group with 6-step scenario to lure victims into trap