Pham Ngoc Dat at a police station in Nghe An province. Photo taken by police
A central Vietnam man and his accomplices have been arrested for buying banking information and selling it to Cambodian criminals.
Pham Ngoc Dat, 21, from Nghe An province, and seven other men are being investigated for “illegal exchange of bank account information” under the Penal Code, police said on Saturday .
The others were Hoang Khac Trung, 21, Ngo Duc Y, 36, Nguyen Trong Duc, 28, Le Van Cuong, 33, and Nguyen Van Cong, Nguyen Van Lap and Nguyen Van Ly, 19.
According to police, Dat worked in Cambodia and knew that several criminals there needed to buy other people’s banking information to commit their crimes.
In 2020, he and his accomplices offered to buy the private bank accounts of residents of Nghe An and several other localities at a price of 1.5 million VND ($60) per account “to launch several advertising programs.”
After that, he sold these accounts in Cambodia for 4 million VND per account.
His actions were discovered in early October. At that time, the police identified that his group had purchased 23 accounts and pocketed more than 55 million VND.
According to the investigation, Cambodian criminals allegedly use bank account information to launder money, gamble and commit online fraud.
All accounts after being sold by Dat to those in Cambodia were used to fraudulently appropriate goods in cyberspace with a transaction amount of up to VND200 billion per account.