Because of gullibility and lack of vigilance, many people have been lured, threatened, and had their property taken by scammers.

Messaging app Telegram is considered a "paradise" for scammers to lure victims into investing in cryptocurrencies.

Taking advantage of gullibility

At the end of January 2025, many people were shocked and surprised when Hue City Police coordinated with the Department of Cyber ​​Security and High-Tech Crime Prevention to crack down on the CRP1 project, arresting Hoang Trung Nghia (born in 1991, residing in Quang Phuoc commune, Quang Dien district), calling himself "Tony Hoang" for using computer networks, telecommunications networks and electronic means to appropriate property.

In early 2023, Hoang Trung Nghia had the intention of defrauding and appropriating other people's assets, so he impersonated Tony Hoang and created the website "IMB DAO" with the address https://imbdao.com, along with the social network accounts Twitter @IMBDAO_VietNam and the Telegram channel named "IMBDAO_VietNam".

To appropriate investors' money, Nghia built his image as a KOL (influencer) in the cryptocurrency market and posted a lot of false information on his social networks such as: Nghia's IBM_DAO Fund was invested by a number of large investment funds in the world; some members of the project team wanted to resell ZRO shares (layerZero cryptocurrency project).

Nghia created a telegram group “LayerZero Pool” consisting of many fake telegram accounts to impersonate members who wanted to resell shares of the ZRO project. When a victim wanted to buy back shares of a virtual currency project, Nghia provided his virtual currency wallet address information to the victim to transfer USDT, then appropriated it. All information about the LayerZero (ZRO) projects that Nghia discussed with investors was fabricated by Nghia, completely untrue, with the purpose of appropriating assets.

In order to avoid investigation by authorities and conceal his fraudulent behavior, Nghia registered many decentralized virtual currency wallets to provide investors with USDT transfers. After that, Nghia transferred all the stolen USDT virtual currency to many different wallets and converted it into cash VND through transactions on the Binance exchange.

Subject Hoang Trung Nghia was arrested by Hue City Police for using computer networks, telecommunications networks and electronic means to appropriate property.

According to Mr. Tran Th. - a victim of Nghia residing in Hue City, through the social network Twitter, Mr. Th. got to know "IMB Tony" who is the owner of the decentralized fund IMB DAO. Nghia used Telegram accounts, Twitter, Telegram channels, and emails to attract investors to participate in cryptocurrency projects from the first rounds. Initially, Nghia invited Mr. Th. to join a Telegram group called "IMB DAO Shark Club". At this time, Nghia provided a lot of information such as: announcing that the organization Outlier Venture (a virtual currency fund organization) had invested 200,000 USD in Nghia's IMB DAO project; cooperating with crypto funds in China; doing marketing for the Nillion project in Vietnam; cooperating with the Unicorn Hunter fund...

With similar tricks, many other victims across the country have also fallen into Nghia's scam. Among them, many cases have been verified by Hue City Police such as: Mr. VXT (born in 1998, residing in Tuy Hoa City, Phu Yen Province) was scammed by Nghia for about 125 million VND; Mr. N.D.T. (born in 1997, residing in Bien Hoa City, Dong Nai Province) was scammed by Nghia for 50 million VND...

According to statistics, Nghia defrauded and appropriated 93,000 USDT (about 2.35 billion VND) from investors. The appropriated money was used to pay debts and invest in some cryptocurrency projects but suffered losses. The Investigation Security Agency of Hue City Police has issued a decision to prosecute Hoang Trung Nghia for the act of "Using computer networks, telecommunications networks and electronic means to appropriate property". At the same time, continue to investigate and expand the case.

Variety of tricks

According to information from Hue City Police, the case of Hoang Trung Nghia is just one of many cases handled by the unit. The situation of high-tech criminals participating in fraud in cyberspace is becoming more and more common. Notably, every time there are new state administrative procedures such as: issuing and renewing driver's licenses, identifying VNeID accounts, updating biometrics of bank accounts, electronic tax refunds, etc., criminals create new fraud scenarios, causing victims to get lost in a "matrix" of information and easily be deceived.

In 2024 alone, Hue City Police handled about 30 cases related to this behavior; at the same time, they received hundreds of reports from people who were scammed online. Notable among them are cases such as: Impersonating monks to call for charity, support, and donations to organize "Summer Retreats", repair spiritual worship facilities that were on fire, etc. The main targets of online fraud criminals are women, workers, farmers, and retirees.

Common methods and tricks of high-tech criminals include: Emotional fraud then luring people into financial investments, doing online tasks or sending money or valuable gifts; impersonating financial companies or banks to support loans, increase credit limits, then requesting money transfers to complete procedures; impersonating state agencies to contact to complete administrative procedures; impersonating public agencies to call and threaten to request money transfers or support to recover money that has been defrauded...

Subject Le Trung Thanh was arrested for impersonating a monk to call for charity, support, and donations.

Mr. Thai Minh Tri (Phu Xuan District) shared that last week he received a call claiming to be an officer of Hue Electricity Company and informing him that his household had underpaid the electricity bill for January due to a mistake by the meter reader. This person instructed Mr. Tri to quickly pay the electricity bill via a link sent via the Zalo application to avoid power outages. Fortunately, he had heard of similar tricks through newspapers and radio, so he hung up and contacted the company's official hotline number to confirm.

Notably, many subjects use Deepfake technology (cutting and editing videos and sounds to fake other people's faces using artificial intelligence) to impersonate; at the same time, they take over the victims' social media accounts to text and call to borrow money. Having encountered such a case, Ms. Nguyen Thi Phuong Anh (Thuan Hoa district) said that she received a call from the Facebook account of a relative in the US. This person repeatedly asked Ms. Phuong Anh to transfer money to several accounts at Vietnamese banks with the reason of wanting to buy local specialties to send abroad as gifts.

“The video call had a relative’s face, and they asked for urgent money transfer, so at first I believed it was real. However, the call quality was quite low, the image was blurry and flickering, so I told my husband. After that, the whole family decided to contact the relative’s husband and found out that the Facebook account had been hacked and many other people had also received calls and messages asking them to transfer money,” Ms. Phuong Anh recalled.

Colonel Nguyen Thanh Tuan, Director of Hue City Police, said that the most fundamental and effective solution is for each citizen, when discovering problems related to high-tech crimes, to promptly coordinate with the authorities, especially the police force, to identify and fight against them. Only then can high-tech crimes be contained and eventually pushed back.

(To be continued)

Article and photos: MINH NGUYEN