Four people in Ho Chi Minh City will face charges of theft for hacking foreigners’ credit cards and stealing their money, the People’s Supreme Procuracy, Vietnam’s highest office of prosecutors, announced Monday (March 7).

 

All in their twenties, the four men stole information from hundreds of credit cards and then used them to buy air tickets for themselves or to resell to others.

 

Between August 2009 and February 2010, they had bought air tickets worth over VND1 billion (US$47,927) in total. One of them, 24-year-old Mach Huu Tai, was also found using the credit cards to buy goods online from overseas.

 

The Ministry of Public Security launched investigations after they and the Vietnam Airlines found one member of the ring Le Ngoc Thai and another man, Pham Minh Duc, failing to present the credit cards used to buy their air tickets online at the Tan Son Nhat Airport in Ho Chi Minh City late December, 2009.

 

The duo couldn’t prove that the tickets were bought by another person as well; and police found information about many credit cards owned by foreigners in Thai’s laptop.