A call from a fake delivery service costs me $800

A week ago, I received a call from a delivery service. Since I was not at home, I instructed the staff to leave the package in the lobby of my apartment building and to provide their bank account information so I could pay for the goods, which cost VND305,000.

Accustomed to this type of delivery, I immediately made the transfer once I received the account number. A few minutes later, the same phone number called back, claiming I had mistakenly sent the payment to the wrong account. To avoid being penalized and secure my refund, the shipper pleaded with me to message a contact they claimed was their customer service department for further instructions.

I was then guided to open my banking app and fill in the account number according to their instructions. For the “amount to transfer” field, I was told to copy and paste the number they provided and then proceed. I was told to wait three seconds to receive my refund. However, after waiting more than three seconds, my money was not returned, and I instead found that over VND20 million had vanished from my account.

The contact explained that this happened because I made an error and that I needed to repeat the steps, but this time I would need to have over VND20 million in my account to proceed. At that moment, I realized I had become a target of a scam.

I always take precautions to protect my personal information, never sharing my phone number or other details publicly. However, I am left wondering how these scammers managed to obtain my information to carry out their fraud.

A few days ago, my colleague also received a similar call. Luckily, they were home, and when they went to receive the supposed package, no one was there. If my colleague had not been home at that time, they too could have fallen for these scams like I did.

I hope everyone remains vigilant enough to avoid becoming a target like me.

Have you experienced similar scams?