Vietnam man indicted for stealing $423,000 from 800,000 cellphone users

Police in Vietnam’s capital city of Hanoi have indicted a former sales department head of a local company for providing about 800,000 mobile phone users with apps containing porn content alongside spyware to appropriate over US$420,000 from them. 

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Nguyen Tuan Anh, 29, has been found raking in VND9 billion ($423,000) from this trick, Hanoi police said on Monday. 

The spyware in the provided apps would secretly send messages to designated numbers and the charge for such messages would be deducted from the victims’ phone accounts and credited to Anh’s bank accounts, investigators said.

Anh would be prosecuted for “using computer networks, telecommunications networks, the Internet or digital devices to appropriate property,” pursuant to Article 226b of the Penal Code, the police said.

Initial investigation results show that about 800,000 subscribers of such operators as Viettel, Mobifone and Vinaphones have fallen victim to the man’s scam.

In July 2013, Anh directed his staff to set up a website at mmoney.vn to supply about 300 apps for use on mobile phones, investigators said.

After cellphone users downloaded these programs – with mainly sex clips and images – to their handsets, the spyware from these apps would be automatically installed on the devices.

Such spyware would then send hidden massages to some given service numbers without the knowledge of the phone users. Among these numbers are 8x77, 8x71, 8x55, 8x88, and 6x86.

Subscribers would lose VND15,000 ($0.7) for each of such messages sent from their handsets.

In order to expand their illegal business, Anh set up a Facebook page, “Mmoney.vn – Dịch vụ kiếm tiền online hàng đầu Việt Nam” (“Leading online moneymaking tool in Vietnam”), to look for partners to distribute his harmful apps in order to enjoy as much as 85 percent of the revenue they generated.  

As a result, after a year of operation, the website has had over 2,400 members. 

Of the VND9 billion Anh had appropriated from his victims, he spent about VND1 billion paying his partners, investigators said.

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