Vietnamese police have arrested two Chinese men and a local woman belonging to a ring whose members posed as law enforcement officials to con people out of billions of dong (VND1billion ~ US$46,600).
>> Taiwanese posing as cop gets 4 years in phone scam
Police officers in the southern province of Ba Ria-Vung Tau on Friday said they had arrested Zheng Ke Xi, 40, and Zheng Zhuen, 35, both hailing from China’s Fujian Province; and Le Thi Anh, a Vietnamese woman from the northern province of Quang Ninh.
Both Zheng Ke Xi and Anh told investigators that they had been hired by Zheng Zhuen to carry out the scam for 2,000-3,000 Chinese yuan ($320-481) per month.
Police are searching for five other Vietnamese people who also belonged to the ring.
The group was reported to manage to obtain lists of landline subscribers, then its members pretended to be Vietnamese police officers or prosecutors and phoned these subscribers to cheat them.
During such phone calls, the victims were told that they were under investigation for money laundering or drug trafficking, and were asked to transfer the amounts in question to certain accounts for police probes.
The swindlers promised their victims that those amounts would be returned to them within a day if no signs of crime were detected.
Many followed the impostors’ instructions out of fear, and subsequently lost money.
Anh asked poor people to open ATM accounts and give the ring the ATM cards in return for wages.
The Vietnamese woman and her Chinese accessories then used such accounts to receive money transferred from their victims and the cards to withdraw cash.
The ring members also took advantage of Internet banking services to transfer the money to their own accounts.
They were found appropriating billions of dong from their victims, said Senior Lieutenant Colonel Le Thanh Tung, deputy head of the social crime investigation police department in Ba Ria-Vung Tau Province.
In this province alone, the three apprehended people have transferred VND1.5 billion ($70,200) to the ring as part of the fraud in the past few months, investigators said.
This scam was then reported to Ba Ria-Vung Tau police officers who decided to probe it and track the fraudsters in Quang Ninh.
On searching the rooms of the two Chinese at Phuong Oanh Hotel in Mong Cai City, which is Quang Ninh’s capital, police seized 120 cellphone SIM cards, 80 ATM cards, some tablets, and a lot of cash.
Ba Ria-Vung Tau police have handed all the three detainees and the confiscated items to the Ministry of Public Security for further investigation.
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