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Authorities in Gia Lai are investigating a lottery scam that defrauded more than 368 million VND through an online scratch-card program.
According to the report, on April 7, Mr. N.C.M., 49, from Gia Lai province, joined a prize-draw program operated by the account “Cty Vé Cào Thần Tài 88888.” The entry fee was 299,000 VND.
After completing the operation, the suspects contacted him via Messenger, instructing him to watch a livestream of scratching the tickets. They then announced that he had won a prize of up to 1.872 billion VND.
To claim the prize, the perpetrators required Mr. M. to pay processing fees and foreign-exchange conversion fees. They also exploited a misstatement in the transfer details to require multiple transfers, promising that the additional funds would be added to the prize amount.
Mr. M. was further asked to pay an additional 5% personal income tax of 93.6 million VND and international transfer fees of more than 190 million VND.
In total, Mr. M. made six transfers to the account provided by the scammers, totaling 368,622,000 VND.
To build trust, the attackers sent fake screenshots showing a transfer of 1.872 billion VND and urged him to wait 24 hours, claiming the large amount was being processed by the system. After he did not receive the money and the scammers stopped responding, Mr. M. realized he had been defrauded.
Police warn the public to remain vigilant, not to trust prize programs promoted on social media, and not to transfer money to strangers to avoid asset losses.
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