HANOI: Police in Vietnam said they broke up a major online gambling and fraud ring, arresting 35 people accused of scamming victims out of US$350 million.
The arrests took place on December 31 across five northern municipalities including the capital Hanoi, according to police in Hung Yen province.
The "suspects were using advanced technology for fraud and online gambling", police said in a statement Tuesday (Jan 6).
The gang had used social media to advertise goods for sale, but failed to deliver them and deleted their profiles once victims had transferred funds.
The stolen money was then transferred to online gambling accounts to avoid detection by authorities.
Police confiscated five cars and 42 mobile phones during the operation and froze 125 accounts at 16 banks.
In mid-December, police from northern Lang Son province arrested 22 Vietnamese suspects in Cambodia on similar fraud charges in a joint operation between the two countries.
There were 3,000 victims in that case, scammed out of $285 million.
Since 2020, Vietnamese victims have lost $1.5 billion in more than 24,000 online fraud cases, police said late last year.
Across Southeast Asia, criminal gangs have used casinos, hotels and fortified compounds as bases to carry out sophisticated cyberscams, according to the UN Office on Drugs and Crime.
Cambodia hosts dozens of scam centres with tens of thousands of people perpetrating online scams -- some willingly and others trafficked -- in a multibillion-dollar illicit industry. - AFP
