Stock investment fraud blows away billions

'Hunting chickens' with 'attractive' order transactions

Over the past few months, the author has received many invitations to join investment groups via Zalo from many strangers. A series of groups have names such as "International Trade", "Golden Age", "International Gold Price", "Super Stock x6 Account"...

People need to be extremely careful when participating in international securities, foreign exchange, and gold investments.

To find out, we tried joining a group called "International Gold Price" with nearly 400 members. This group is introduced as specializing in investing in gold in the US and European markets. In the group, there are constantly new members connected without knowing why. The dialogues that appear frequently are posted in the group such as "I was just added to the group by someone but I don't understand anything"; "I just joined the group, can anyone help me?"; "Is this buying and selling gold online? I thought I had to go to the store to buy it"...

Exchanges in the world gold investment group

For newbies, the admin (group administrator) will send a text message with instructions on how to practice on a demo account (simulated account) first and it is confirmed to be "completely free". Accordingly, to invest in gold online in international markets, participants must download the Meta Trader 5 app on their mobile phones and then will be guided through trading via private messages from the admin to each person.

After just 1-2 practice sessions with some test trading orders, most newbies think they understand how to place orders. Then, they will transfer money to invest for real. Some money transfer orders announced in the group obscure the account number and the recipient name is an individual at several different banks.

The content of the money transfer orders are all the same: "Buy 38xxxxxx V" with the serial numbers after changing (according to research, they will correspond to each person's transaction account number). Some people initially transferred small amounts, about 20 - 50 million VND, but after only a few profitable investment orders, most of them will deposit more money because the larger the capital, the more profit. Also according to the discussion on the group, the money transfer and withdrawal are quite fast and have never encountered any problems.

Notably, the group often has information about the daily profit level sent by members to stimulate greed, and all day the group just waits for messages from the admin to place the same orders. Usually there will be transactions in the US market (evening Vietnam time) and the European session (afternoon Vietnam time). For example, at 1:30 p.m. on February 23, an admin of the group texted: "Everyone prepare to receive European session orders". Immediately after that, the message announced "Sell (sell) gold price 2021: TP 2012, SL 2026" (TP is to take profit and SL is to cut loss). And a series of members enthusiastically participated, announcing that they had placed orders according to the above strategy. After about 30 minutes, many members announced that they had closed their profits and sent photos of their accounts. Some people made a profit of 95 USD, others received 200 USD...

There was even someone who offered a profit of more than 1,000 USD with the message "I earned 25 million here, honey. Gold is down" and received a series of compliments like "I'm so crazy about you", "It's true that trading with a large capital makes you tired", "A day of winning trading", or complimenting the admins "You're so good, now you've helped us earn money"...

At more than 8:00 a.m. on February 26, the admin sent a message to the group giving the order price range "Buy price 2015 - 2010: TP (2020 - 2030) - SL (2005); Sell price 2045: TP (2025 - 2020) - SL (2050). Some members responded and said they would place orders immediately. Then, only about 15 minutes later, someone took a picture of their account and said they would close the buy order immediately and make a profit of 168 USD to "get lucky for the new week". Another member then sent a picture of their account and closed the sell order with a profit of nearly 100 USD... making the remaining members "impatient". At more than 1:30 p.m. on the same day, an admin sent a message "Everyone, prepare for the European session" (ie participate in trading on the European market) and a series of members responded in response. With the message giving the order "Sell (Sell) Gold 2032, TP: 2025 - SL: 2038"… continued a series of members participating in the order… And so this floor traded continuously for 5 days a week without any member reporting a loss (!?).

Billions of dollars lost when caught in the international stock market vortex

Mr. TQA (residing in Dak Lak) panicked when mentioning international stocks because in 2023 he was scammed out of 1.5 billion VND. The story began when Mr. A. received a strange phone call, introducing himself as an employee named Thanh working at the ASX Markets stock exchange based in Ho Chi Minh City. Thanh asked to be friends on Zalo and showed pictures of buying foreign stocks such as Apple, Coca Cola... each day making a profit of several hundred USD more than the previous day. Seeing the high profit, Mr. A. opened a trading account and deposited several tens of millions of VND to buy foreign stocks.

The money was transferred to a bank account for UNI VN Company Limited, with the content recorded as Lima 13P-MT4. Whenever buying or selling, Mr. A. followed Thanh's instructions. According to TQA, the first few days, the interest on the account increased quite quickly. At this time, Mr. A. decided to increase the investment amount to hundreds of millions of dong. Every evening, Thanh urged Mr. A. to place orders, sometimes buying, sometimes selling, from investing in stocks to foreign exchange (forex), gold... But on Mr. A.'s account, there were more stocks that decreased in price.

At this time, Thanh urged Mr. A. to transfer more money into the account to maintain the order, deposit money to keep the amount of stocks he was buying, when the price increased again, he would sell, if he could recover, otherwise the floor would close, he would lose heavily. Panicking because the loss was up to hundreds of millions of dong, Mr. TQA decided to bet big, transferring a few hundred million dong more. Just like that, the amount of money transferred to the stock exchange increased to 1.5 billion dong but he still lost. Frustrated, with a little money left in the account, Mr. A. wanted to withdraw but could not. Later, he discovered that many people participating in this floor were also scammed out of money.

Some international stock and cryptocurrency exchanges are currently quite active in calling to invite participants. Many people are annoyed because there are days when they receive 5-10 phone calls inviting them to join the exchange. In addition to the phone calls inviting them to join, some exchanges also offer promotions to attract participants. For example, investors on the ATFX exchange will be able to participate in the ATFX Jackpot 2024 - Southeast Asia. Each stage (a total of 13 weeks) has a Jackpot prize worth 3,000 USD, divided among all the winners. In some forums, victims of this exchange said they were stuck with 35,000 - 40,000 USD when participating. After being lured by employees to participate in stock trading on the MT5 platform, investors made a profit and wanted to withdraw their money, but the exchange deliberately made it difficult for them to withdraw their money. After pursuing for many months, investors were helpless and could not get the money out of their accounts.

According to a warning from Ho Chi Minh City Police, recently criminals have taken advantage of virtual currency and cryptocurrency trading to appropriate people's assets. The subjects themselves created beautiful introductions of "application of smart matrix algorithms" operating according to "Blockchain technology" to deceive players, attracting new participants from rural areas, the elderly, and people who do not know about financial technology. These people also created a team of "decoys" called the command reading experts, regularly posting photos of receiving huge profits, buying houses... These are essentially binary transactions, disguised as cryptocurrency projects.

Source: https://thanhnien.vn/nan-lua-dao-dau-tu-chung-khoan-thoi-bay-tien-ti-18524022620392036.htm