Investigators of the Ho Chi Minh City police filed criminal charges against Duong Minh Tam, a 27-year-old resident of Tan Binh District, for allegedly hacking into a bank to steal VND10 billion (US$425,000), on Saturday.

The police received a denunciation letter from a bank in Ho Chi Minh City on June 21 that accused Tam of illegally getting into the bank’s information system to misappropriate the huge amount of money.

Police officers made an urgent search of Tam’s house, and issued an arrest warrant for him on the same day.

Investigation results showed that Tam opened a bank account at the bank on November 23, 2022.

He registered for the bank’s internet banking and mobile banking services via the eKYC electronic customer identification platform on May 23.

The transaction limit of online banking services is not higher than VND100 million ($4,240) a day.

Tam continued to open an online savings account valued at VND1 million ($42.4).

As per the bank’s regulations, Tam is allowed to pledge his savings to borrow money online on the bank’s app, with the maximum lending amount at 85 percent of the pledge. The amount does not exceed VND2 billion ($84,820) per transaction.

As such, with his VND1 million savings account, Tam could only borrow a maximum VND850,000 ($36).

However, Tam hacked the bank’s financial data, and falsified his pledge by multiplying the savings value up, from VND1 million to VND51,244 billion ($2.2 billion).

Between May 23 and June 9, Tam made seven withdrawals and transferred over VND10.5 billion ($445,315) into his own account.

After that, he transferred more than VND500 million ($21,205) back to the bank. As a result, he successfully stole VND10 billion from the bank.

Tam withdrew VND6.5 billion (275,670) from his bank account for spending, while the bank uncovered the scam before he used the rest.

The police are expanding the investigation into the hacking.

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