HANOI: As the Lunar New Year (Tet) approaches, financial and banking scams in Vietnam are showing a sharp upward trend, prompting banks and law enforcement agencies to issue repeated warnings.
According to alerts from police and commercial banks, a new scam has recently emerged involving the impersonation of a purported government Tet support policy worth 400,000 Vietnamese dong.
Fraudsters often pose as local officials or representatives of government agencies, contacting citizens by phone or text message to inform them that they are eligible for financial assistance.
Victims are then asked to verify information by providing one-time password codes, bank account details or clicking on suspicious links. These allow criminals to siphon funds from their accounts.
Such schemes particularly target the elderly and residents in rural, remote and mountainous areas.
Law enforcement authorities emphasise that legitimate state support programmes are implemented through official local government channels and never require citizens to disclose confidential information or complete online transactions to receive payments.
Authorities have also warned that scam groups are increasingly upgrading their methods through advanced technology.
Fraudsters are now using artificial intelligence and deepfake technology to create highly convincing fake emails, messages, videos and voice recordings.
These tools are used to fabricate prize notifications, promotions or financial aid announcements.
In some cases, they even mimic the voices of relatives or representatives of reputable organisations to deceive victims.
At the same time, fake websites and advertisements are becoming more sophisticated, often closely resembling the official sites of banks or major companies and differing only by a few characters in the domain name.
Phishing scams are also being deployed across multiple channels, including SMS, social media platforms, QR codes and automated bots, making it possible for victims to fall into a trap with just a single click.
Alongside high-tech scams, banks and authorities are also warning about fraudulent online loan offers circulating on social media.
Scammers advertise quick loans with simple procedures and low interest rates, then demand upfront deposits or fees under the guise of application processing, identity verification or loan insurance.
Once the money is transferred, the perpetrators immediately cut off contact and appropriate the funds.
Banks advise citizens to seek loans only from licensed credit institutions and financial companies and to never transfer deposits or advance fees to personal accounts or entities lacking clear legal credentials.
Meanwhile, banks continue to record numerous cases of customers receiving fake messages or calls impersonating bank brands.
These communications typically claim that accounts are experiencing issues, require verification, need service upgrades or offer gifts or year-end refunds.
According to the State Bank of Vietnam, the SIMO information system for customer risk management, monitoring and prevention had issued warnings to more than 2.4 million customers as of Dec 28, 2025.
The system temporarily suspended or cancelled more than 776,000 transactions showing signs of risk, with a total value exceeding 2.9 trillion dong.
Le Van Tuyen, deputy director of the Payment Department at the State Bank of Vietnam, said that by Dec 26, 2025, the entire banking sector had completed biometric verification for more than 143 million individual customer records and over 1.5 million organisational customer records with payment accounts, using chip-based citizen ID cards or the VNeID application.
In addition, approximately 22.14 million individual e-wallet users and 392 organisational e-wallet users had completed biometric verification. — Viet Nam News/ANN
