Bank transfer transactions are increasingly popular as people tend to use cashless and have many payment options. However, recently, crooks have continuously taken advantage of technology to transform tricks to cheat and appropriate property of careless users.
Suspicious transaction
Ms. Phung Thao, the owner of an individual business in Thanh Hoa, said that recently, her store had a number of cases where customers gave a transfer screen with confirmation of success to pick up goods but did not receive balance notice and did not receive money. This person then urged the delivery to go "because of urgent business", so she was suspicious and determined to deliver the goods only when there was money in the account.
“They gave the transaction screen the correct account number, recipient, amount and said it was successful but I did not receive the balance. They said it might be due to the weekend or the transaction outside of office hours, so the money came late and then offered to deliver the goods because they were in a hurry,” Thao said. Because she had previously been carefully taught by her children about some online scams, she did not agree to deliver items to customers. "Then they left and were not satisfied," the shop owner added.
Mr. Ngo Viet (Hanoi), a toy model business man, also met many times with customers "transferring money but never seeing money in the bank". Viet said that most of the cases are customers who buy online, agree to pay first, then send a screenshot of successful payment, then request delivery. However, he also only agreed to deliver the goods after he had confirmed the change in the balance in his account.
“I told the staff that every time a customer makes a transfer, they have to report back to check, with my confirmation, they will be able to deliver the goods, while ensuring no loss for themselves, and avoiding the case of penalty deduction from salary for doing wrong. Some people come to buy at the store in the late afternoon, evening or weekend, when the transfer says the money may be slow due to different banks or outside office hours. But now most banks have fast money transfer, not like ten years ago that mentioned the above reason," Mr. Viet said.
Website creates fake bank transfer interface that openly works
Business people like Ms. Thao or Mr. Viet, thanks to their vigilance, have not fallen into the trap of crooks trying to appropriate property by faking a bank transfer interface. But there have been a number of cases where store employees or shop owners were careless, subjective and trusting in the screenshots given by customers and lost millions in transactions.
Publicly falsifying transfer invoices
Fake bank transfer screen is not a new technique, but has become more sophisticated and has the help of online tools. If before, crooks had to use image editing software to change the content on the invoice, now they can be created easily through websites and groups that provide this service.
When searching with keywords related to transfer invoices on Google, a series of results appear that teach and provide a way for users to "create" bank bills. Worth mentioning, these websites are aware that creating transaction bills is illegal, but continue to guide readers to do illegal things.
On a website specializing in counterfeiting bank bills, users only need to register for an account (free) to use a series of services such as creating transfer screens, balance screens, balance fluctuations, etc. These tasks require payment to the person behind the website from 20.000 VND to 100.000 VND for each result. In which the price of creating a transfer bill is VND 100.000, the person in need only needs to select the desired bank interface, provide the information you want to display such as name, sender / receiver account number, amount, transfer content, transaction time ...
They are also so sophisticated that they allow selection of details such as iOS or Android screenshots, battery capacity options displayed on photos, number of wave lines, etc.
According to a notice from a rare website that has removed the instructions (but still leaves most of the other content), initially this service is to provide people who "like to live virtual", specializing in showing off sales or donated money online to "catch Likes", but then used for fraudulent purposes.
Many cases have been discovered
As the scam began to be applied by many people, there were also cases discovered. According to Thanh Hoa police's website, the agency caught two people using fake bank transfer receipts to trick a local store earlier this year.
This month, Hai Duong police also issued a warning about a similar trick after breaking a line specializing in the above behavior. The team divided the task for one person to play the customer but did not bring cash, the other stayed at home to fake the money transfer screen. Their target audience is young shop owners – the set of bank account users who accept online payments.
The police agency recommends that people always carefully check their transfer invoices and only make transactions after they are sure they have received the money into the bank they are using.
