On Thursday, a seminar took place in Da Nang to discuss the application of the national criminal laws and procedures, all issued in 2015, for handling hi-tech crime and scams via social media, especially transnational fraud cases involving foreigners.

The seminar was jointly organised by the municipal People’s Procuracy and the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA).

Recent years have seen a dramatic growth in the number of internet crimes and fraud cases via social media in which criminals, with their proficiency in IT, use deceptive and cunning tricks to illegally appropriate the property of others.  Such cases have caused serious and enormous consequences to the community.

Many of the experts participating in the seminar noted that investigations into such cases usually face difficulties because fraudulent transactions are conducted via the Internet.  If detected, scammers promptly destroy criminal evidence by deleting allegedly fraudulent websites and data on their computers in a bid to evade capture.

According to the latest statistics released by the Viet Nam Supreme People’s Procuracy, over the 2010-2016 period 130 Internet crime cases, involving 322 suspects in total, were recorded across the country.  Notably, such cases together caused an annual average of over 172 billion VND in damage.  In particular, hi-tech criminal gangs usually target victims in Viet Nam in such aspects as finance, banking, securities, consultancy, and gold trading.