A student in Hanoi was arrested for setting up around 100 fan pages that smear the reputations of many agencies and companies, including Dantri/DTiNews, in order to blackmail them.
Nguyen Van Tien, now a fifth year student of the Hanoi University of Technology, is from the northern province of Ha Nam’s Kim Bang District. He opened a fanpage named “Dantri cheats customers”. Right after learning about the page, the newspaper’s editorial board informed the Hanoi Police Department and asked for an investigation. After some effort, the local police detained Tien.
Nguyen Van Tien at the police station
According to the initial investigation, on August 30, 2013, Tien used his Facebook account to create a number of different fan pages using the logos of the agencies and companies in question. He also published his mobile phone number on the pages so that the firms and agencies could contact him to buy the fan page domains at prices ranging from VND100,000 (USD4.76) to VND1 million (USD476).
However, after receiving no offers Tien started to commit libel in order to put pressure on the companies to buy his pages.
Besides Dantri/DTiNews, many other organisations, such as Hoa Phat Group, Vingroup, Oceanbank, Vinacafe and PetroVietnam have become victims to the scheme.
An official from the Hanoi police said the trick of opening a website to stain a company or an agency is not new, however, in this case, Tien set up fanpages without having to register domain names.
“He hoped that some companies would not understand the technical side and would spend the money to get rid of the problem,” the official added.
