Nguyen Duc Hung, 25, Hoang Dinh Tai, 27, Nguyen Phung Hoang, 22, and Nguyen Anh Tuan, 26, are being investigated for “fraudulent appropriation of assets.”
The police seized six phones, four laptops, VND130 million, and 37 bank accounts from them.
Earlier, the Cybersecurity and High-Tech Crime Prevention Department of Bac Ninh Police discovered that the account “HOANG_COIN_247” showed signs of fraud, and illegally accessing accounts to appropriate assets from Binance app users, so they launched an investigation.
They found that Hung had learned how to illegally access users’ accounts on the cryptocurrency exchange Binance.com.
He and other accomplices then bought Binance accounts, linked them to burner phone numbers for communication, and set up connections with non-official bank accounts for payments.
Once these accounts were set up, the group accessed Binance.com, placed orders to buy a certain amount of cryptocurrency (USDT), and quickly sold it on the platform at a low price to attract buyers.
When a buyer showed interest, Hung sent messages without confirming the transaction code to make them think there was an error. Hung then instructed the buyers to scan a QR code he provided to “assist in manually setting up the USDT transfer.”
However, once the buyers clicked on the account that scanned this QR code, Hung’s group immediately took control of the account and withdrew all the cryptocurrency from their wallets. The stolen cryptocurrency was then sold immediately.
The investigation revealed that since the beginning of the year, Hung and his accomplices carried out more than 50 fraud cases, appropriating USDT worth VND10 billion from numerous people nationwide. The stolen money was used by the group to buy cars, top-up game accounts, and for personal expenses.
The case is currently under further investigation.
Read More: Men hack multiple Binance accounts, steal $390,000