(Dan Tri Newspaper) - After becoming one of only three people in the world to receive a full scholarship to a university in Singapore, Nam and two other individuals began building a "trap" to scam thousands of people.
"Only rich people have free time, free time to sit and count money."
The above statement was made by Mr. Pips - Pho Duc Nam - in a video posted in August 2024 on his TikTok channel teaching how to get rich and make money from foreign exchange and stock trading platforms. Two months later, Nam was arrested.
Instead of sitting on the hood of a luxury car or in a multi-million dollar apartment, Nam is now sitting in a detention cell, while his money, gold, and other assets are being counted one by one by the authorities.
Nam's "system"
Pho Duc Nam was born in 1994 in Ward 8, Vung Tau City, Ba Ria - Vung Tau Province. After graduating from high school, Pho Duc Nam was one of only three people in the world to receive a full scholarship to a university in Singapore, majoring in information technology.
Nam was fluent in English and held an IELTS score of 8.5. At the age of 27, Nam collaborated with Le Khac Ngo (then 31 years old, residing in Bac Tu Liem district, Hanoi ) and a Turkish national to begin constructing a sophisticated and perfect "trap."
At that time, Nam, Ngo, and a foreign national directed seven other individuals in Vietnam to establish numerous "shell" companies as a "front" to recruit employees working in the fields of foreign exchange trading and derivative securities.
Within a short period, Nam's organization had approximately 1,000 employees, working from 8 am to 9 pm daily. The group created and managed five websites with English interfaces to mislead participants into believing they were trading on reputable international exchanges, thus building trust among investors.
Nam's TikTok page (Photo: Screenshot).
Hanoi police said that these websites were all programmed and linked to the bank accounts of the individuals managing them; each trading platform was connected to MetaTrader 4 and MetaTrader 5, which are popular foreign exchange and stock trading platforms worldwide.
To carry out the fraud, the perpetrators operate under the guise of companies and websites operating in the fields of telemarketing, telesales, financial investment consulting, and securities brokerage, etc., to entice and lure customers into participating.
Nam's organization is hierarchical, with many departments such as: Accounting, Human Resources, IT department, Sales and Customer Service department...
The various departments within the company operate independently, complementing each other, and contact customers through social media platforms like Zalo and Telegram to carry out fraudulent activities and misappropriate assets.
The perpetrators' tactic is to provide false information to gain the trust of customers, causing them to transfer money to accounts designated by the perpetrators.
Phó Đức Nam when he was arrested (Photo: TA).
Customers are added to private chat groups, guided and advised on how to place buy and sell orders, encouraged to deposit money, and encouraged to use "leverage" (borrowing) to cause the victim's account to be wiped out. Before the victim is completely wiped out, they offer "pieces of cheese"—profitable trades, but with small amounts of money—to enchant and entice investors to go all-in.
Furthermore, when customers run out of money, the perpetrators provide false information to gain the investors' trust and get them to transfer more money to "recover" their losses. When the customers are no longer financially able, the perpetrators block all communication and embezzle all the money the customers have transferred.
By December 2024, authorities had identified over 2,600 victims whose assets were misappropriated, with the total amount of initial deposits totaling approximately $50 million.
When wealth is exposed
To attract more "victims," Mr. Pips and Mr. Hunter made full use of social media platforms like TikTok and Facebook. These two individuals regularly posted videos sharing investment experiences, money-making methods, and wealth-building tips.
To prove that his investments yielded high returns, Nam flaunted his money, luxury cars, and shared details of his lavish, wealthy lifestyle. In his videos, Mr. Pips consistently stated that his wealth came from investments, thereby encouraging others to join his system.
Mr. Pips gradually became a youth idol, an "idol" in wealth creation and financial business.
Mr. Pips' Rolls-Royce (Photo: Hai Nam).
BNL (22 years old, from Quang Ninh, a student at FPT University) is one of the people who "fell into the trap" set by Nam's videos.
According to the report, through her research on Facebook and TikTok, L. learned about Pho Duc Nam, a stock market investment expert who frequently posted videos and images of luxury cars, watches, and expensive houses. L. developed a desire to be like Nam.
Around the beginning of June, L. messaged Pho Duc Nam on Facebook to befriend him and get acquainted, with the intention of learning about the exchanges Nam was investing in. Pho Duc Nam introduced L. to investing in stocks through an exchange called JPexchange.com and instructed the student to buy stocks such as NVIDIA, NOVELIS, XAUUSD, XAGUSD, WTI...
Subsequently, L. made a total of 37 money transfer transactions from his personal account to Pho Duc Nam's stock exchange account, which were then wiped out. The total amount of money L. was defrauded of was 8 billion VND.
When he was arrested, these assets were seized and frozen by the investigating authorities, causing a public uproar due to the enormous value of the "super swindler" Mr. Pips's fortune.
The supercars of Pho Duc Nam (Photo: Hai Nam).
Specifically, during the investigation, authorities seized and froze 316 billion VND in bank accounts, bonds worth 9 billion VND, savings accounts worth over 200 billion VND; 69 billion VND, 2.3 million USD; 890 SJC gold bars; 246 kg of solid gold; 31 supercars, 7 luxury motorcycles, 59 famous brand watches, worth approximately 300 billion VND; 84 pieces of gold and diamond-encrusted jewelry... In addition, authorities froze transactions related to 125 real estate properties.
At the end of December, Hanoi police continued to seize another Mercedes car, 12 billion VND in bank accounts, 18 apartments and real estate properties worth approximately 100 billion VND, and recovered an additional 500,000 USD from Nam's bank account in Singapore.
The total value of assets seized by Hanoi police is approximately 5,300 billion VND.
At a press conference held by the Ministry of Public Security, Major General Nguyen Thanh Tung, Deputy Director of the Hanoi City Police, stated that many other assets belonging to Mr. Pips and his accomplices, hidden abroad, have been discovered. In the coming period, the Hanoi City Police will coordinate with the Supreme People's Procuratorate and request judicial assistance from overseas to recover all assets.
Source: https://dantri.com.vn/phap-luat/mr-pips-va-nhung-cu-lua-day-lam-giau-20250130234017950.htm
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