VietNamNet Bridge – Women in HCM City who have sought online boyfriends have lost a total of hundreds of thousands of USD to a group of Nigerian men in Malaysia.

Illustrative image

HCM City police have prosecuted three Vietnamese women for being involving in the swindling network. They are Nguyen Thi Thuy Trang, Pham Thi Kim Phuong and Nguyen Thi Tot.

According to investigators, Tot, Phuong and Trang provided banking accounts in Vietnam and withdrew the money after Vietnamese women transferred money into these accounts and then shared the money with Nigerian men in Malaysia.

In October 2015, Tot asked her two friends and Trang to open four banking accounts and then gave the account information to Phuong, who then gave it to a group of Nigerians in Malaysia to swindle Vietnamese women.

These Nigerian men created Facebook pages and posed as Western single men to make friends with Vietnamese women. After a time chatting with and sending gifts to build relationships with them, the people promised to present expensive gifts. They asked the women to send money to their accounts to pay for custom charges.

Some women in HCM City transferred over VND2.6 billion ($130,000) to the four accounts that Tot gave to Nigerian men. 

After a long time of waiting for expensive gifts, these ladies knew that they were cheated by their “foreign boyfriends” who had disappeared after receiving the money.

Trang confessed that she received 10% of money from Tot and she then gave 5% to the owners of the banking accounts.

In another case, Trang joined three other Nigerian men to swindle over ten women with a total amount of nearly $750,000.

Le Ha