The first call that Mr. Chieu received after returning to the city after his break was to invite him to become an online volunteer, along with thousands of others. Mr. Dao Van Chieu (Thanh Hoa) said he received a call on the morning of January 30th, his first day back in the city looking for a job. "They introduced the job of listening to music and liking songs on an online music page, for 10,000 dong per song," Chieu said.

Despite reading warnings about online volunteer fraud, Chieu still tried the job for the purpose of informing his relatives. "They actually paid me 10,000 dong for that, and then tempted me to do more tasks by depositing money to earn high commissions. Their work group had attracted nearly 4,000 members," he said. 

As soon as he joined the group, Chieu's phone constantly received chat notifications. Whenever someone completed a task, they would send a message to the group. "I received hundreds of messages, meaning hundreds of people have trusted and completed the task. Some of them may have been deceived," Chieu concluded.

Founder of the Anti-Fraud project, Mr. Ngo Minh Hieu, stated that the online fraud situation, where assets and personal information are stolen, has not shown any signs of improvement during the Lunar New Year holiday period. In fact, the number of fraudulent domains has even increased after the holiday ended. From January 19th to 27th, over 180 fraudulent pages were detected, with 166 pages being used to steal assets and 15 pages being used to steal personal information. The system recorded hundreds of victims, but the actual number could be much higher.

According to Mr. Hieu, before the Lunar New Year, scams often target the need for online part-time work and low-interest withdrawals. During and after the Lunar New Year, scams often exploit major brand gift programs, recruitment, and loan scams. For example, last week, many Facebook users in Vietnam received messages about the "Bia Saigon 2023 Lunar New Year Gift Program." When they clicked on the link, they saw a notification that they had won millions of dollars, but were asked to provide personal information. The link was also automatically spread via messages to their Facebook friends.

The official Fanpage of Bia Saigon then issued a warning, asserting that this is a fake product labeling and suggesting that users not click the link. However, hundreds of people admitted below the post that they had been fooled into clicking.

The Anti-Fraud Project has detected and blocked a number of domains that use the keywords "tet," "lixi," capitalizing on users to enter personal information or bank accounts.

In addition, taking advantage of the psychology of many people who need loans after Tet with quick, hassle-free procedures, lending large amounts on demand, impersonating financial organizations has also risen in recent days. In this form, the culprits request the victims to access websites with images, logos similar to banks, financial companies to create trust. After exchanging information, the lender sends papers (fake) to convince them to transfer the fee for the purpose of ensuring loan documents, loan insurance fees, or to take the reason for the blocked account, ID/ID card in the bank's black list...

"Many people have fallen for scams and transferred hundreds of millions of dong to fraudsters, with the result being not only failing to receive the loan but also losing money," Mr. Hieu said. Specifically on January 30th, the system recorded 15 cases of black credit loan scams using .vn domain names.

Mr. Hieu predicts that these types of scams will continue to be prevalent in Vietnam in the coming days. To avoid falling victim, users are advised not to make any payments to online recruiting parties under any circumstances. If approached through messaging platforms such as Telegram, Zalo, Facebook, stop the conversation to avoid being led astray. Additionally, do not click or enter personal information into unfamiliar links to prevent information loss.