Trương Diên Nghĩa and Trương Diên Tiến who are suspected of swindling more than $500,000. — Photo thanhnien.vn

ĐÀ NẴNG — Đà Nẵng City’s Hoà Vang District Police on Thursday began an investigation into two swindlers for appropriating a total of VNĐ12 billion (US$516,000) from some 1,000 people.

The pair, 26-year-old Trương Diên Nghĩa and 22-year-old Trương Diên Tiến, are brothers from Thừa Thiên-Huế Province’s Hương Trà Town.

They are also being inspected for forging personal documents and ID cards to open bank accounts, Thanh niên (Young people) newspaper reported. 

Earlier, T. – a victim of the gang, who is working at Đà Nẵng City’s Hoà Cầm Industrial Zone – received a phone call from someone claiming to be a bank employee, warning that her account had been hacked and asked for personal details.

T. provided the caller with a one-time password (OTP) sent to her phone and later received a message saying that VNĐ19.5 million ($839) had been withdrawn from her bank account.

The caller told T. it was just a spam message to check whether she was getting updates about her account to prevent attacks. He urged T. to give him another OTP.

Noticing her account again had VNĐ20 million ($860) withdrawn, she went to a nearby ATM to check and was shocked to see the remaining balance was only VNĐ100,000 ($4.30).

Hoà Vang District Police traced the transactions and discovered that T.’s money was sent to an account under the name of Nguyễn Phạm Trường Giang in HCM City. However, Giang said he had not opened any account as he lost his ID card.

According to a bank statement, from 2018 to 2019, the account had withdrawn billions of đồng, from VNĐ5 million to 20 million ($215 to $860) each time, from several ATMs in HCM City and Thừa Thiên-Huế Province.

Of all these transactions, there was only one time that money was transferred to Trương Diên Nghĩa’s account.

Nghĩa and Tiến were then arrested for questioning.

According to their initial testimonies, in 2017, Nghĩa went to HCM City to work. There someone borrowed his ID card to open a bank account.

Nghĩa learned fraudulent tactics and how to avoid being traced back to them, then asked his brother to join in the scheme.

Nghĩa got his hands on two ID cards of two people named Nguyễn Phạm Trường Giang and Huỳnh Thanh Phương online. He replaced his own picture into Giang’s ID card and used Phương’s ID card unchanged to open accounts.

They approach high-tech scamming rings by offering to help them receive money from victims’ accounts then transfer to criminals’ e-wallets or buy game cards.

In the case of the worker T. and others, the two received a commission of 5 to 20 per cent of the scammed amount.

They also headed a fraud ring targeting lottery players by advertising they had “an uncle working for a lottery company who can reveal winning combinations of digits.”

A number of players paid them to receive tip-offs. If results turned out to be wrong, they blocked the “customers’” accounts. If they were lucky to give a correct hint, they would continue swindling.  

The police called on all victims of Nghĩa and Tiến who had transferred money into accounts numbered 060202643399 under the name of Nguyễn Phạm Trường Giang and 060188405791 under the name of Huỳnh Thanh Phương to contact Hoà Vang District Police at 02363.783.123. — VNS