Impersonating a shipper to commit fraud
Mr. Trang A Gia, an officer of Van Ho commune (Son La), while waiting to receive a document sent from Thai Nguyen for work, was scammed out of a loan of up to 62 million VND, which was then appropriated by the subjects.
According to Mr. Gia, after receiving a call from a person claiming to be a shipper with information matching the waiting order, he transferred the payment. Immediately after that, this person continued to call back to apologize for "giving the wrong accounting number of the company", causing him to accidentally " Become a member of the Vietnam Post organization" with a membership fee of 3.5 million VND/month.
To cancel his registration, Mr. Gia was instructed to find the "Vietnam Post Membership Law Firm" group online, texting to request the cancellation of the order. After a series of instructed operations, his phone was taken over control via software similar to UltraViewer.
"They called and texted me urging me to take a photo of my citizen ID card and identify my face. After about an hour, they disbursed the money and transferred it from my account to another account.
Then he asked me to download the app to borrow more. When I saw suspicion, I stopped and they blocked contact. The next day, I received an email confirming the loan of 62 million VND. Both my wife and I were devastated, Gia said.
Unexpected high interest loan at FastMoney
When reporting to the authorities and checking the email, Mr. Gia discovered that he was on the list of two loans including: Clause 1: 40 million VND for 18 months; Clause 2: 5 million VND for 1 month; Insurance fee: more than 14 million VND.
I used to borrow from a bank, the cost was only about 1 million to 100 million VND. Now that I have been scammed and have to pay more "cut-off" interest rates, my wife and I are desperate," he said.
According to the contract provided by Mr. Gia and his family, FastMoney Finance Company applies an interest rate of 39.5%/year for a personal consumer loan of VND 40 million for 18 months, the monthly payment is VND 3,004,000, the total refund is about VND 54 million.
In addition, the borrower also signed a collection service contract with Amber Fintech Joint Stock Company, and must pay an additional VND 14,404,000 in service fees within the same period. Thus, the total cost of the loan is about 68.4 million VND, equivalent to nearly 50%/year of the initial loan amount.
The above incident is a warning to people about increasingly sophisticated fraud tricks, taking advantage of technology and the names of legitimate organizations to appropriate assets. The authorities recommend that people should be vigilant, carefully check information before making financial transactions or sharing personal data on online platforms.
