Recently, the online community was abuzz with a post about a female tourist being scammed, losing billions of VND when booking a room at a resort in Ninh Binh.
Accordingly, the guest booked 2 rooms for adults and 2 children, from January 31 to February 3. After texting the fanpage Facebook to impersonate the resort on Kenh Ga Island (Gia Vien District, Ninh Binh), the staff advised her on the weekend room price of 2.9 million VND/room, on the occasion of Tet holiday from 3.6 million VND for the Twin Room (double room) class with an area of 30m2.
After a few days of discussion, the female tourist decided to close 2 rooms and deposit about 6.5 million VND. However, she was informed that she had transferred money in the wrong content, so the automatic system could not confirm the booking request.
Customers are required to copy the code provided by the resort to the transfer content for confirmation by the accountant.
At this time, the customer was asked to activate a VNPay account for himself and transfer money into it according to the therapy given by this staff to ensure. With the reason for the transfer of money incorrectly, customers have to continuously transfer money to their VNPay accounts with a gradually large amount of money, from 39.5 million VND, 125.6 million VND, 379.6 million VND and finally 485.6 million VND. The total amount transferred was more than 1 billion VND. When the female tourist could not contact the resort, she realized she had been scammed.
The post shared the incident that attracted thousands of conflicting comments. Some people said they were also fooled by similar tricks, but most of them only lost less than 10 million VND and could not get it back, so they had to accept the loss.
According to Lao Dong's investigation, the victim was confirmed to be N.T.T (Hai Phong). Currently, Ms. T. is still shocked and worried when recalling the incident.
Ms. T. shared with reporters: "At first, when I made the wrong transfer, I was asked to create a VNPay account and transfer money to my own account. Because the account to which the money was transferred was mine, they did not ask me to transfer any more money to them, so I was gullible and transferred all my savings into it without any suspicion."
Ms. T. said that the incident only happened in one afternoon. When the money was transferred the 7th time, she realized that she had been scammed. When calling back the phone number of the person introduced as a resort employee, Ms. T. discovered that her contact had been blocked, the amount in her VNPay account of more than 1 billion VND was also "disappeared".
After the entire incident, Ms. T. reported it to the local police and was instructed to provide a statement.
The incident is being verified by the local police.
The female tourist shared: "I want to tell everyone the story so that everyone can see and be careful with online fraud. Hopefully, the authorities will soon investigate, find the culprit, and help me get back the lost money".
The resort where Ms. T. booked the room was Minawa Kenh Ga in Gia Vien (Ninh Binh). She said she found the resort information on Facebook and proactively texted and asked for the service. She said that she had booked rooms many times via Facebook fanpage without any incidents, so she was not very careful.
According to the resort's confirmation, the Fanpage that the customer was scammed on is fake and not from the resort.
Receiving information about the incident, Mr. Bui Van Manh - Director of Ninh Binh Department of Tourism said that the Department has assigned the functional department to work with the resort in Gia Vien district to guide the handling and communication for tourists.
Mr. Manh added: "Before Tet 2025, this resort was also impersonated by bad guys, Facebook fanpages, etc. with nearly the same interface as the main page of this unit to commit fraud".
Faced with the situation of tourism fraud taking place during Tet, the local Department of Tourism also regularly recommends that tourist areas, hotels, resorts, and homestays in the area not be taken advantage of by bad guys to defraud and lose money.
Units, when detecting fake websites and fanpages... need to immediately report to the authorities to promptly prevent and handle them promptly, avoiding being affected, and not causing damage to tourists.
Previously, at the end of 2024, Ninh Binh Provincial Police issued a notice reminding tourists to be vigilant against the trick of impersonating reputable accommodation establishments to defraud and appropriate property.
The announcement clearly states that in the context of the strong development of information technology, bookings at accommodation service businesses such as hotels, motels, homestays, etc. are becoming more popular online because of their convenience and speed for tourists.
Taking advantage of that, some subjects used tricks to defraud and appropriate the property of tourists who wanted to stay by creating fake social networking sites of hotels, resorts, and homestays to appropriate tourists' property.
The scammers' trick is to create websites, fanpages... with interfaces similar to those of reputable hotels, homestays, and resorts. Fanpages post hotline numbers, have people on duty to advise tourists, and include many beautiful pictures and comments from other customers to increase the level of credibility.
To avoid being scammed by the above form, visitors who choose to book hotel rooms, resorts, homestays, etc. need to carefully research information, choose a travel service provider or book a travel room available on the apps, need to be extremely vigilant with very cheap booking invitations, 20-50% lower than the market price.
After checking the contact information, you need to carefully study the booking and cancellation policy; ask the hotel to send you the booking confirmation information; you can also ask the service provider to show you the local business license...
The Provincial Police also called on tourism accommodation service businesses to increase the provision of official information of their enterprises widely on mass media, on social networking sites so that tourists know and contact them to book rooms or use other services. At the same time, when detecting fake websites and fanpages... immediately report them to the authorities to promptly prevent and handle them promptly.
Talking to Lao Dong newspaper reporters, a representative of Vietnam Payment Solutions Joint Stock Company (VNPAY) said that VNPAY does not provide any booking services on social networking platforms. The impersonation of VNPAY not only causes financial damage to customers but also seriously affects the brand reputation of the company.
“VNPAY does not have the “refundance to receive compensation” as the scammers have taken advantage of to scam. We have never asked customers to provide personal information or make transfer transactions to receive refunds.
VNPAY has repeatedly warned about the tricks of counterfeiting brands to scam customers.”, VNPAY representative informed.
This unit also said that VNPAY currently provides the feature of "booking hotel rooms" on many banking applications and VNPAY wallets, helping users find, compare prices and book rooms conveniently and safely. Customers can access directly through banking applications or VNPAY wallets to make transactions right on the official platform, instead of having to search through many other social media channels.
