On November 26, the Department of Cyber Security and High-Tech Crime Prevention (Da Nang City Police) announced that it had successfully dismantled a large-scale cryptocurrency investment fraud ring that operated sophisticatedly in cyberspace and caused tens of billions of dong in damage to thousands of people across the country. The authorities arrested 14 suspects, seized many devices, data, and froze related assets.
The idea of setting up "ghost" projects and sophisticated tricks to attack investors' trust
According to the investigation, from the end of 2020, Nguyen The Duy (44 years old, residing in Hoa Tien commune) and Nguyen Pham Phu Thoa (41 years old, residing in Hai Van ward), Da Nang city, began planning to create a fake virtual currency project called TOSI to appropriate assets.
This group hired programmers to create TOSI coins on the Binance Smart Chain platform, and built a series of websites such as tsijp.jp , tsibank.ai , tsigh.ai to attract investors. In particular, they installed a system that allowed all deposit transactions to flow directly into the subjects' personal wallets , instead of a shared wallet or exchange like legitimate projects.
To "cover up" the project, the group claimed that TOSI was a coin of a Japanese corporation, preparing to be listed on Binance. Along with that were unreasonable investment packages with interest rates from 3% to 22%, paying rewards according to a multi-level model to attract new participants.
When the investor cash flow slowed down, this group immediately closed the website , citing "maintenance" and "hacker attack" as reasons, then moved on to create a new project to continue the scam.
Scaling up with fake media and multi-level “leader” systems
To promote the project, Duy and Thoa collaborated with Duong Thanh Ky (41 years old, residing in Hai Van ward) to build the YouTube channel "TOSI VIETNAM" , posting false promotional videos, organizing livestreams, seminars, and tours to meet investors in many provinces and cities.
At the same time, they recruit "leaders" in many localities to attract participants, forming a widespread multi-level system, causing the scope of fraud to spread quickly and become difficult to control.
Nearly 90 billion VND was appropriated - more than 8,000 victims
The police agency determined that from 2021 to now, this group has deployed 3 consecutive fraud projects , appropriating about 90 billion VND from more than 8,000 victims nationwide.
During the search, the authorities seized: 11 laptops, 16 mobile phones, More than 20GB of source code data, About 1,000 pages of documents, 1.1 billion VND frozen in bank accounts, Nearly 100,000 USDT in e-wallets, Many related real estates....
This is XEM one of the largest virtual currency fraud cases in Da Nang recently.
Recommendation: People need to be alert to "cloud projects"
Da Nang City Police asked victims to report as soon as possible for assistance. At the same time, they warned people not to participate in virtual currency investment projects without verification by the authorities , to avoid falling into the trap of high interest rates, fake listings or disguised multi-level marketing models.
