Police in Hanoi on Wednesday arrested two young men who hacked into others’ online accounts and cheated their friends of money.

Nguyen Quy Phuc, 19, and Phuc Ngoc Tuan, 21, both from Hai Phong City, had cheated people off a total of VND400 million (US$19,500) in ten different cases, including a bank officials and a former diplomat.

The police said Phuc and Quy owned two emails that automatically received information from a number of computers that had been installed with a software keylogger, which tracked the keys struck on a keyboard. 

It’s only known that Tuan and Phuc were given the emails by a person named Manh.

On June 12, their emails received Yahoo! Messenger and email accounts of a former foreign affairs official in Panama, now living in Hanoi.

Phuc changed the password and pretended to be that person, sending emails to borrow VND110 million (US$5,364) from one of his friends in the list.

In another case, Phuc and Quy stole the account of a boy studying in China and asked his girlfriend in Vietnam to send him VND100 million.

Phuc was previously convicted of robbery in 2008 and was released from jail in late 2008 after serving an 18-month sentence.

The police are investigating the case further. They have asked people who have had their email accounts hacked or who were cheated by the duo to cooperate with the investigation. 

In Vietnam, email hacking scams first came to light in 2007 and a group of hackers were caught for the first time last month.