Nearly 20 Billion VND Lost Due to Online Job Scam
The Hanoi People’s Court has accepted the case file and is expected to soon re-trial the defendant Mac Binh Hung (born in 1991, in Binh Thuan province) and 12 accomplices for the crime of ” Fraudulently Appropriating Assets” as prescribed in Article 174 of the Penal Code.
In the same case, the defendant Phan Van Minh (born in 1978, in Ho Chi Minh City) and 6 others are accused of committing the crime of ” Money Laundering “, according to Clause 3, Article 324.
The case file shows that in August 2022, Ms. Nguyen Thi L. (born in 1985, residing in Cau Giay district, Hanoi) saw a job posting in a Facebook group for an accounting data entry clerk for “Alpha Accounting Company” and sent a message to contact. She was instructed to connect with a Telegram account named “Nguyen Thi Nien”.
According to the case file, Nien introduced herself as a recruiter for the Phamarcity pharmacy system, showed Ms. L. the company’s employee card, and guided her to access a link, register an account with her phone number, and provide an ID to perform the task. Nien said that Ms. L.’s main job was to enter data for orders that were missing or had incorrect amounts that the company needed to correct.
During the work process, Ms. L. was contacted by another person using a Telegram account named “Thu Ky Yen Phamarcity”, who informed her that the company had a period for completing orders and only 3 minutes to complete it to receive a commission. For each period, “Thu Ky Yen Phamarcity” instructed Ms. L. to first deposit money into the account on the registered website.
In the first two times, Ms. L. deposited over 3.1 million VND to fulfill the orders, and she immediately received back (principal and interest) over 4.5 million VND.
In the next time, the subject asked Ms. L. to transfer 30 million VND to an account provided by the subject, but she could not withdraw the money. The subject gave various excuses, asking Ms. L. to continue transferring money to withdraw the transferred amount.
Without suspicion, from August 25th to 30th, 2022, Ms. L. made 24 transfers totaling more than 19.9 billion VND to 15 bank accounts provided by the subjects, but she still could not withdraw the money. Knowing that she had been deceived, Ms. Nguyen Thi L. went to the Hanoi City Police to report the incident.
The group of defendants at the first-instance trial that took place on April 17th was temporarily adjourned.
Foreign Currency Business Owner Involved in “Money Laundering” Ring
During the investigation, the police discovered that the bank accounts to which Ms. L. was instructed to transfer money were managed by Unit 777pay of Jibian Company (headquartered in Cambodia ). This is a business owned by a criminal organization operating in the field of “money laundering”.
Jinbian Company is divided into 8 units and “launders” money from various illegal sources in many countries.
Unit 777pay is responsible for the Vietnamese market, specializing in laundering illegal money from online gambling apps, money from fraud, etc. by establishing a payment gateway on the website https://mem.77777.org to transfer and receive money in order to convert illegal money into “clean” money (i.e., money whose origin cannot be traced).
According to the prosecution agency, Unit 777pay in charge of Vietnam has 79 people, divided into 5 groups: Customer Acquisition Team; Card Making Team; Deposit Team; Withdrawal Team; and Finance Team.
During their operation, the Customer Acquisition Team will look for people who need to launder money and negotiate a transaction fee of 1 – 3% on the total amount of money to be “laundered”; the Card Making Team is responsible for collecting bank accounts in Vietnam and then transferring them to other teams for transactions; the Deposit Team is responsible for providing bank accounts to customers who need to launder money and into which they transfer money, and this team is divided into 3 branches (branch 1 sends bank account numbers to fraudulent individuals to receive money from victims; branch 2 is responsible for online payments on a payment gateway; branch 3 deposits money through the Momo application with small amounts)…; the remaining teams will be provided with accounts on the homepage of a payment gateway used to manage deposits and withdrawals.
Regarding the amount of more than 19.9 billion VND of Ms. Nguyen Thi L. that was seized, the prosecution agency alleges that the group of employees of the Deposit Team belonging to Unit 777pay instructed and provided the bank account numbers for Ms. L. to transfer money into and then deposit into the system. In addition, there were some transactions in which the payment gateway system automatically provided bank account numbers for Ms. L.
It is noteworthy that, upon expanding the investigation of the flow of money seized, the investigating agency clarified that Phan Van Minh (born in 1978, in Ho Chi Minh City – established Minh Phuc Co., Ltd. and engaged in foreign currency trading). Since 2020, Minh has started to receive “money laundering” in the form of receiving money through his account and then having employees withdraw cash and hand it over to customers, or transferring it to bank accounts designated by customers.
To operate, Minh hired accomplices to open bank accounts to receive, transfer, and withdraw money; hired a person to work as an accountant and manage bank accounts and transfer money online.
In this case, Minh received and “laundered” more than 10 billion VND, which was transferred by Unit 777pay. The actions of Minh and his accomplices constituted the crime of “Money Laundering”.
Regarding civil liability, during the investigation of the case, Ms. Nguyen Thi L. requested that the prosecution agency require the defendants to compensate her for the amount seized and to handle the case strictly in accordance with legal regulations.
