Take professionalism to double scam
During the "cloud hunting" season, D.T.L (23 years old, Hanoi) and her friend booked a room to travel to Ta Xua (Bac Yen district, Son La). After consulting homestays with beautiful views, D.T.L and her friend booked a room at a homestay called C.H Homestay Ta Xua. According to L, this page has more than 20 thousand followers and a lot of interactions, so L and her friend proactively texted the fanpage to ask about room rental services. During the texting exchange, the scammers texted very methodically, using automated messages to create professionalism.
After a period of consultation, seeing that the price was reasonable, L and her friend decided to finalize the booking. At that time, the scammer used a bank account under the name of LLC to ask L and her friend to transfer the room deposit. Because the bank account number was in the company's name, L and her friend trusted them and transferred 100% of the room fee, which was 760,000 VND.
With sophisticated tricks, the subjects not only scammed once but also continued to trick customers into transferring money a second time. “After the room transfer transaction, the scammers used the excuse that we had transferred the wrong content so we could not complete the room deposit procedure. To make sure we locked the room, we had to transfer the money back and write the transfer content according to the code provided by the scammers.
However, after transferring the money, the scammers said that we had to wait 10 days to receive the room deposit that had been mistakenly transferred, and if we wanted to get it back immediately, we had to transfer another 4 million VND for the company's accountant to complete the deposit refund procedure. Luckily, we did not need to get the deposit back immediately, so we did not transfer any more money," said D.T.L.
On the day of the trip, when checking in at the homestay, L discovered that he had been scammed because the homestay had announced that the rooms were fully booked for a long time and the fanpage where L booked the room was a fake fanpage.
Like L, H.Y (22 years old, Hai Phong) was also scammed of his deposit via a fanpage. The scammer created a fake fanpage under the name of a 4-star hotel in Tam Dao, Vinh Phuc and ran ads to gain trust from customers.
Seeing the price was cheaper than other booking websites and the professionalism of the fanpage, H.Y transferred nearly 1.4 million VND to deposit the room. However, after transferring the deposit, H.Y was informed that the room was no longer available and was instructed by the scammer to refund the deposit. "I texted an accountant of the hotel because according to the scammer, the business had a refund operation. However, that operation was actually a second money transfer operation, so I did not receive the money but was tricked into transferring the money twice with a total loss of 4 million VND", H.Y shared.
After realizing that she had been scammed, H.Y searched online and discovered that many people had also fallen into the trap like her. The scammers not only created fake fanpages of hotels in Tam Dao (Vinh Phuc) but also created fake fanpages of hotels and homestays in many other tourist destinations such as Ha Giang and Moc Chau (Son La).
Is it easy to get back a scammed deposit?
According to lawyer Dang Van Cuong, Chinh Phap Law Office, the acts of providing false information, deceit, impersonating others to appropriate money and property of the victim are acts of property appropriation. Depending on the level of violation, the fraudster will be handled according to different sanctions.
"If the act of fraud or appropriation of property (providing false information to appropriate other people's property) is from 2 million VND or more, or less than 2 million VND but the act negatively affects security, order and social safety, the subject committing this act will be criminally prosecuted for the crime of fraud and appropriation of property according to the provisions of Article 174 of the 2015 Penal Code with the sanction of non-custodial reform up to 3 years or imprisonment from 6 months to 3 years.
In case of organized crime committed twice or more or illegal profit from 50 million VND to under 200 million VND, the penalty is imprisonment from 2 to 7 years; if property is appropriated from many people and the total amount of appropriated money is from 200 to under 500 million VND, the penalty is from 7 to 15 years in prison; if the amount of appropriated money is from 500 million VND or more, the penalty is from 12 to 20 years in prison or life imprisonment,'' said lawyer Dang Van Cuong.
According to lawyer Cuong, when being scammed, the victim should keep evidence and report the incident directly to the investigation agency at their place of residence for consideration, resolution, and as a basis for investigation. At the same time, lawyer Cuong also said that the victim can get back the property when the investigation agency arrests the subject, prosecutes the subject and that subject must still have property to compensate.
