According to Senior Colonel Nguyen Thanh Ha, deputy director of the ministry’s criminal police department, online fraud is increasing rapidly worldwide and in Vietnam’s neighborhood in the past five years, though with criminals using increasingly sophisticated and hard-to-detect methods.
They often use artificial intelligence and fake social media accounts to build scam scenarios that precisely target victims’ psychology, Ha said at a conference on combating fraud and property appropriation in cyberspace organized by the Ministry of Public Security at the People’s Police Academy in Hanoi on Monday.
They use nine major schemes.
Impersonating authorities is the most common tactic. Criminals pose as police officers, prosecutors or court officials and call victims to threaten them and demand money for “verification” or “case resolution.”
Recently some gangs were found to even set up fake offices resembling police workplaces, with national flags and emblems to boot, wear uniforms and stage scenes with people in handcuffs purportedly being questioned by officers to deceive victims.
They then make video calls to psychologically manipulate victims, causing panic and prompting them to voluntarily disclose personal information, bank accounts and social media details.
Once their accounts are taken over, the criminals continue to coerce victims by demanding that their relatives should pay ransoms.
Others impersonate soldiers to ask for help, medical staff to inform victims about family members facing “medical emergencies”, teachers to promote foreign study programs, lawyers, and officials from utility and telecom companies, the Ministry of Finance or banks.
In a case in August, 2025, scammers showed a victim in the southern Can Tho City images of a staged “criminal interrogation,” with an accomplice posing as an officer in an interrogation room, and falsely claimed that the victim was involved with the person seen in the video call. Photo provided by Can Tho police |
Job scams are the second most common. Criminals lure victims with offers of “light work, high pay,” work-from-home jobs, online sales collaboration, and task-based earning schemes.
They then demand upfront fees, occasionally paying small sums for the job in the beginning to exploit victims’ greed.
But many people have been trafficked and forced to work at online scam centers using this trick.
In investment scamscriminals create fake financial or cryptocurrency trading platforms and solicit investments with offers of huge guaranteed profits. These are often linked to multi-level fraud schemes, and criminals even hire social media influencers to advertise and solicit investments.
Romance scams are also widespread, with criminals using non-authentic social media accounts to befriend victims, build emotional relationships online and then extract money, often by encouraging investments through fake brand links.
Using AI and deepfake technologyscammers mimic the faces and voices of victims’ relatives or friends on fake video calls and ask for emergency loans.
In other cases, they add people’s faces to sensitive images or videos for fraud or extortion.
Other forms include fraud in e-commerce and online transactionswhere scammers send fake payment links, impersonate products or steal the buyers’ deposits.
App-installation scams involve luring victims into installing fake applications with interfaces resembling legitimate apps to seize device control and drain accounts.
Another tactic involves pretending to mistakenly transfer money into a victim’s account. Scammers then ask for the money back, and if the receiver falls prey and does return it, they impersonate debt collectors from a financial company, threaten the person and claim the money was a loan that requires interest at high interest rates.
A variation has scammers claiming to live overseas and asking victims to return a mistaken transfer via an international money transfer link.
Once bank details are entered, all the money in the victim’s account is stolen.
Some scams also operate under the guise of fundraising for charity.
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Fraud in e-commerce is among major online scams targeting Vietnamese, according to police. Photo by Viet Nga |
Why is online fraud increasing?
According to Ha, scammers fully exploit locations in some Southeast Asian countries where legal frameworks and governance are weak to establish “scam centers.”
Vietnam has inadvertently become embroiled in this crime, with perpetrators using the country to hire bodies and launder money.
Many victims are gullible or, admittedly, greedy and so believe in the promises of “light work, high pay” and easy investments with huge returns.
Careless sharing of personal data and the tendency to trust callers claiming to represent state agencies via phone or social media also enable criminals.
Ha admitted that leaders and frontline officers combating these crimes have not kept pace with technological advances.
There is a shortage of high-tech equipment for crime prevention, he said.
Pham Gia Bao, deputy director of the anti-money laundering department, said people avoid befriending strangers or suspicious social media accounts.
If anyone gets offers to open, rent or sell bank accounts or SIM cards, they should contact the nearest police station, he said.
The government needs to strengthen legal regulations related to telecommunications, finance, cryptocurrencies, and virtual assets to keep pace with technological development, he said.
It should use high-tech monitoring tools to detect and prevent online fraud, he said.
Cracking down on unregistered SIM cards is an urgent requirement to prevent cyber fraud, he added.
Nguyen Anh Cuong, deputy director of the Vietnam Telecommunications Authority under the Ministry of Science and Technology said telecom operators have been instructed to ensure subscribers’ information matches with the national database.
SIM cards in fake names do exist, but largely due to lack of public awareness about the importance of using properly registered SIM cards, he said.
In many cases, SIM ownership is transferred without updating information or identification documents are lent or rented out to register subscriptions, he added.
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