Lien of Hanoi said she came across an ad for the job on Facebook January 3.
She signed up for the job because she needed more money for her family before Tet (Lunar New Year), which falls in late this month.
“They claimed to be an educational institution and they were looking for someone to do data entry,” she said. “But in reality, they were trying to trick me into ‘investing’ by asking me to transfer money to a bank account via a fraudulent website,” she said.
The amount of money asked for was within her means, so she did what she was told and put down VND100,000 ($4.26) and VND1 million ($42.64) for the first two deposits.
She made a profit of VND300,000. That was only the beginning of the trickery.
A bigger investment package, worth at least VND8 million, was then offered to her. After transferring the money, the system gave her digital rewards with a total value of more than VND40 million in her web account.
To get the bonus, she had to make a deposit of the same amount by January 5 “to activate the bonus and get all of the money back.”
Though she was feeling a bit suspicious, she was told that the offer would soon no longer be available and they would deactivate her account. So she decided to deposit twice as much as she was told, a total of more than VND90 million. She never saw any of the money again.
Pham Thuong, a university student in Ho Chi Minh City, also fell victim to online scammers and now spends her days worrying about getting bombarded with calls from loan…
