Police has arrested a group of scammers who hack yahoo IDs and swindle money from people.

Scammer try to swindle money

The high-tech crime police unit of Hanoi has arrested 18 suspects, most of whom are high school students in Quang Tri Province led by Nguyen Duc Bi, born in 1996.

The investigation was carried out after people reported that they had their yahoo ID stolen and that the scammer would use their accounts to cheat people on their friend list out of money.

These scammers would use the people's friend list to send links with malicious code such as link to a picture, link to a website to steal yahoo or facebook accounts.

Khanh, a local in Binh Thuan Province said one day she suddenly received a message from her closest friend named Ha. Ha's message said she had an uncle work in telecom company so if Khanh bought a VND300,000 (USD14) phone card, she'd actually get VND3 million in her account.

Trusting her friend, Khanh bought the card and sent the serial number, however, the user with name Ha also asked for Khanh's Yahoo ID and passwords to send back the link with the money and said Khanh must wait for at least 30 minutes.

But when Khanh use the serial number on bought phone card, the operator said it was already used, Khanh's Yahoo ID was also lost.

Mai Van Hung, a lecturer at Hanoi University shared, "About a month ago, I received a link from my friend asking to verify an email address and password and I lost my account after that." The scammer even called him after that, saying they'd give back the account for VND1 million but Hung refused.

The money was stolen from each person was not huge, only several hundred thousand VND, but hundreds of yahoo IDs are lost to con artists. Furthermore, many people have not only lost their accounts but also private information or image that could heavy damage their reputation.

After discovering the case, people who have lost their accounts are requested to contact Hanoi’s high-tech crime police unit at 7 Thien Quang Street to recover the accounts.