In the afternoon of July 19, Ms. Luong Thi B. from Hoi Xuan town, Quan Hoa district, visited the LPBank transaction office and requested assistance from bank staff to transfer money. During the transaction, LPBank staff noticed her strange behavior and contacted the Quan Hoa District Police for support and verification.
The Quan Hoa District Police and LPBank transaction office collaborated to raise awareness and prevent the incident.
Upon receiving the information, the Quan Hoa District Police dispatched officers from the Criminal Police Team to the bank for joint verification. During the interview, Ms. B. revealed that a Facebook account named “Smart Ella” had befriended her and consistently sent romantic messages. After some time, “Smart Ella” expressed a desire to send her a gift from abroad, which included $50,000 (nearly VND 1 billion) and real estate documents.
To receive this gift, the scammer instructed Ms. B. to pay a delivery fee of VND 5 million and provided her with the Facebook account details of the delivery person. After connecting with the supposed delivery person, Ms. B. noticed that they used a profile picture of someone in a police uniform and even sent her a video of the package, which contained a large sum of cash and other valuable items, to gain her trust and exploit her greed.
Convinced by their tactics, Ms. B. agreed to send the money and visited the LPBank transaction office in Quan Hoa district to transfer the funds to the account provided by the scammers, expecting to receive the gift worth VND 1 billion and the real estate documents.
Recognizing this as a typical online scam, the Quan Hoa District Police, together with bank officials, educated Ms. B. about the nature of the scam and advised her not to send any money or follow the scammers’ instructions.
The Woman Scammed Out of $240,000: A Tale of Greed and Online Gaming
“In a recent incident, a woman from Thanh Hoa fell prey to an online scam, as reported by the Department of Information Security (under the Ministry of Information and Communications). She was lured by scammers on social media into playing a game with promised rewards. Unbeknownst to her, as she kept playing and investing money, the scam escalated to a staggering sum of 5.6 billion VND.”
