Warning about taking advantage of province and city mergers to defraud electricity bills

According to Mr. C., on the afternoon of July 6, 2025, he received a call from the phone number 0906221709 claiming to be an electricity employee, asking if he had paid the electricity bill for June 2025, but they checked the system and saw that he owed the electricity bill. Mr. C. honestly replied that he had not paid, so the person pretending to be an electricity employee instructed him to pay online by scanning the QR code. “I often use online payment, the last time I paid the internet bill, the operation was wrong so the money was returned to my account. So this time they suggested paying the electricity bill by scanning the QR code, I didn't think much of it. I heard the other side making a fuss, when I asked, they said that after the merger, many people like me had not paid their electricity bills, so they came to the headquarters to handle it,” Mr. C. shared.

After exchanging over the phone, the subject named Tran My Anh on Zalo sent a message to Mr. C. introducing himself as an electricity technician, who would support Mr. C. in paying the electricity bill for June 2025 by scanning the QR code. Mr. C. followed the instructions, scanned the fake QR code of the electricity industry, and immediately his account was deducted 454,313 VND with the content "pay electricity bill customer code PP03000... Immediately after that, Mr. C.'s account "evaporated" another amount of 12,898,853 VND. Seeing that his account had been deducted too much money, Mr. C contacted the subject again, and the subject told him to come to 35 Phan Dinh Phung ( Da Nang City) tomorrow morning (July 7, 2025) to refund the money. "After that, I called the phone number 0906221709 and could not contact Tran My Anh on Zalo. Only then did I panic and realize I had been scammed,” said Mr. C.

Roughly calculating, the total amount of money that the scammer had swindled from Mr. C. was more than 13.3 million VND. Mr. C. said that he worked as a car mechanic but had to stop working because of eye pain for the past few months and had to be treated; losing a large amount of money made him and his wife sad and worried, unable to sleep all night.

Recently, taking advantage of the merger and restructuring of local power companies, scammers have "set traps" for people with many tricks and schemes. The most common are text messages and phone calls impersonating electricity industry employees, asking customers to update information or pay electricity bills due to system changes after the merger.

According to our research, scams are becoming more and more organized, even with AI voices, fake images of electricity staff uniforms and websites impersonating the electricity industry, very sophisticated to appropriate people's assets, and at the same time steal personal information to use for other bad purposes such as unsecured loans, opening virtual accounts or to continue scamming...

Faced with the above situation, PC Da Nang recommends that people absolutely do not provide OTP codes, bank accounts or CCCD numbers via phone, text messages or any strange links. In case of suspected fraud, people should immediately call the customer care hotline 19001909 for timely verification and support.

Currently, all forms of electricity bill collection are carried out through official payment partner channels such as banks, e-wallets Momo, VNPT Money, Viettel Money... In particular, PC Da Nang never sends messages or calls asking customers to transfer payment to personal accounts. Therefore, people need to be vigilant, constantly update their knowledge to protect themselves and their families from fraudulent acts and tricks that are becoming increasingly complex and unpredictable...