VietNamNet Bridge – As reliance on information technology becomes ever more pervasive in society, cybercrime has grown rapidly both in quantity and sophistication in Vietnam, experts said.

The Criminal Police Department under the Ministry of Public Security successfully dismantled an online football betting ring valued at hundreds of billions of dong in mid-July. The ring was led by Nguyen Van Binh, 36, from the northern province of Bac Giang. — VNA/VNS Photo

The Ministry of Public Security has recently worked with police departments in 52 provinces and cities to dismantle cases of fraud through the use of the internet, telecommunications and banking system to illegally appropriate others’ property.

The trick the criminals deployed was looking for the accounts of bank customers who did not subscribe to internet banking services. The criminals broke into the banks’ websites and then tried to find ways to access the accounts and subscribe to internet banking services. Then, pretending to be bank employees, the criminals called the account holders asking for an OTP (one-time password) to disburse a loan. If the customer provided the password, the criminals could log into the account and appropriate the money by transferring it from the customer’s account to one they had created.

An old method but one still deployed by the criminals was pretending to be employees of lottery companies to cheat people.

Investigators determined that over 560 victims have been affected by the fraud, with the total damage estimated to reach VND43 billion (US$1.8 million).

As many as 12 suspects have been arrested and many concerning documents have been seized for investigation.

Illegal gambling on the internet has also become more sophisticated in the country over the past few years.

The most typical example was a case involving an online gambling ring worth VND9.8 trillion (US$426.3 million), discovered by police from the northern province of Phu Tho and the Ministry of Public Security.

The provincial police were asked to bring to court 92 people, who were facing a total of seven criminal offences, from organising gambling activities and purchasing fake invoices to money laundering, bribing and abuse of power.

The ringleaders of the online gambling case (held via the card game rikvip/tip.club) were identified as Phan Sao Nam, former chairman of VTC Online Telecommunication company, and Nguyen Van Duong, chairman of CNC, a private high-tech security solutions company in Hanoi and, later, chairman of infrastructure development company UDIC.

Since 2014, nearly 43 million accounts were created to join the gambling ring, bringing in revenues of nearly VND10 trillion.

Although the organisation of football betting is strictly prohibited, this kind of crime has increased in recent years.

In the 2018 World Cup, internet football betting with transaction value amounting to thousands of billions of Vietnamese dong was busted by local police. However, it was not easy to investigate as the mastermind of these cases had contact with servers in foreign countries.

Popular tricks

Cyber criminals have often exploited several tricks including using social network sites to illegally appropriate other people’s property, Kinh te va do thi (Economic and Urban Affairs) newspaper reported.

They created Facebook or Zalo accounts and sold household equipment and clothes at an extremely low price to lure customers. Once the customers expressed their interest in the products, they were asked to transfer the money in advance and the contact was quickly cut off after money is received.

The criminals might also hack social network accounts and then send messages to the users’ contact lists to borrow money, asking them to purchase phone cards with big denominations to illegally seize their property.

They could steal information to take money from ATMs and use fake credit cards to buy expensive goods.

Other crimes involved people pretending to be banking officials and making internet calls to cheat people.

According to a report from the Ha Noi Public Security Department, last year about 97 high-tech criminal cases were discovered by the police, resulting in the arrests of 165 people.

The police solved 33 criminal cases in the first six months of this year, a reduction of 17 compared with the same period last year.

Data from www.internetworldstats.com - a website dedicated to tracking the number of internet users in countries around the world - showed that by mid-2017, Vietnam had 64 million internet users, representing 67 per cent of the country’s population. With this number, Vietnam has the 12th-highest number of internet users in the world and ranks sixth among 35 countries and territories in Asia.

Some believe that the Law on Cybersecurity, which was recently adopted by the National Assembly, and takes effect in January 1, 2019 will be an effective tool to protect the internet community and to assist in the fight against hi-tech cybercrime, while critics at home and abroad say it will stymie the growth of internet use and hamper firms’ online marketing activities.

According to the Ministry of Public Security, once the law is implemented, it will help protect internet users from malicious information which affects their honour, reputation and dignity and from other activities that might affect their legitimate rights and interests. In addition, the risk of the theft of personal information will also be mimimised while acts of gambling and the dissemination of negative cultural products will be eliminated.

Source: VNS