At around 11pm on April 25, the Finance and Accounting Department of an agency in Hanoi sent an email to notify employees that some payment accounts of officials in the unit were deducted money even though no transactions were made.

In just about 6 minutes, a customer’s account at Agribank was withdrawn by thieves of 24 million VND.

Receiving that email, Ms. Huyen and many other employees of the agency went to sleep with peace of mind because they thought their cards were locked.

However, from 11:30 p.m., Ms. Huyen continuously received messages deducting money from her account even though she had not made any transactions.

Too worried, that night, she went to the nearest ATM near her house and withdrew all the remaining money from her account.

This customer said that at the same time, some colleagues’ accounts could still be withdrawn until after 3:00 a.m. on April 26 before they were locked.

Sharing with VnExpress, Agribank representative confirmed that there was a problem with a series of employee cards at the above agency.

Agribank said that the bank will verify as quickly as possible to refund the entire amount of money withdrawn.

Currently, Agribank representatives have not given specific information about the specific cause because `it is in the verification process`.

The statement of transactions via text message of this customer shows that 9 transactions were withdrawn each time with an amount of 3,003,300 VND.

With multiple account holders at one agency being attacked at the same time, an expert said, the possibility of crooks using skimming to steal card information at an ATM located near this agency cannot be ruled out.

Skimming is a device like a plastic panel containing a camera to steal card information, placed outside the card slot by the thief.