Anomalous radio signals led Vietnamese law enforcement to stop and search a car on August 21, resulting in the discovery of three fake base stations. One person was arrested but no details were provided about the individual, which suggests the arrested person is a citizen of Vietnam. This was the third vehicle discovered to be carrying SMS blasters around Ho Chi Minh City since the beginning of August.
Previous vehicle stops and arrests occurred on Ho Chi Minh City on August 7 and August 14. The report from August 7 emphasized that the arrested driver was a citizen of another country. Reports of subsequent arrests have also emphasized the possibility of ties to foreign criminal gangs although the Vietnamese press has not speculated about the nationality of these gangs. There is an inevitable suspicion that all of the drivers arrested in Ho Chi Minh City were working for the same gang.
Two active fake base stations were inside the car stopped on August 21. A third inactive fake base station was also confiscated. The active devices were sending smishing messages that impersonated Vietcombank and Vietnam Post. These messages were different to the messages sent by the SMS blasters seized previously in Ho Chi Minh City but the methods used by the scammers were the same. It is likely that the same scamlords are simply changing the phishing websites they use whenever an older scam has been detected, and that they keep recruiting new drivers to replace those previously arrested.
SMS messages that impersonated Vietnam Post told recipients that they needed to update their address details because of a problem with making a delivery. Recipients of messages impersonating Vietcombank were urged to redeem loyalty points before they expired, another common ruse frequently linked to SMS blasters operating in East Asia.
This latest incident has been included in the map of fake base stations that sent SMS messages on our Global Fraud Dashboard. There has been an explosion of new SMS blaster cases since the beginning of 2025. We use AI-enhanced searches to routinely scour the web for new cases, ensuring our SMS blaster map is the most comprehensive and up-to-date resource of its kind.
Photographs of the car and of the equipment confiscated on August 21 were shared by the authorities; they have been reproduced below. One of the SMS blasters appears the same as some SMS blasters recently seized in Bangkok as well as the SMS blasters found in the other cars stopped in Ho Chi Minh City this month.
