Portrait of Doan Trung Duc - the mastermind behind a counterfeit goods ring with revenues of 1,800 billion VND.
Before being prosecuted for large-scale counterfeit production, Doan Trung Duc and Medistar Vietnam Co., Ltd. had meticulously built an image of a "leading enterprise" with extravagant advertising.
On January 18th, the Investigation Police Department of Lao Cai province issued a decision.initiate criminal proceedings against the suspect.Regarding Doan Trung Duc (born in 1980, from Quang Ninh province), General Director of Medistar Vietnam Co., Ltd., on charges of producing counterfeit goods and violating accounting regulations causing serious consequences.
According to the website of Medistar Vietnam Co., Ltd., Doan Trung Duc graduated from the Military Technical Academy in 2003. Mr. Duc held various technical positions before entering the business world.
In 2011, Mr. Duc turned down a job opportunity at a foreign company with a salary of $2,000 per month to establish Medistar Vietnam. This entrepreneur started with a modest capital of 6 million VND. After 14 years, Medistar Vietnam has expanded to two factories covering over 1 hectare in Quang Minh Industrial Park (Hanoi) and employs nearly 300 people.
To build trust, Medistar continuously promotes on its company website its closed-loop production line imported from the US, Japan, and South Korea, along with its capacity to produce hundreds of millions of tablets annually. On the company website, slogans such as "top-tier reputation" and "protecting human health" are heavily emphasized.
However, on January 5th, during an emergency inspection of the factory at Lot 38-2, Quang Minh Industrial Park, authorities discovered thousands of counterfeit and substandard dietary supplement products being packaged on a production line advertised as "the most modern."
Investigators have determined that from 2012 to 2025, Medistar Vietnam Company released hundreds of tons of counterfeit products onto the market, including collagen, vitamins, and bone and joint supplements.
The company's total revenue from its operations amounted to nearly 1.8 trillion VND.
Mr. Duc and his accomplices are also accused of keeping transactions off the books to illegally profit hundreds of billions of dong and causing tax revenue losses for the State.
Following the news that Mr. Doan Trung Duc had been indicted, at around 11:00 AM on January 19th, the website of Medistar Vietnam Co., Ltd. displayed an error and became inaccessible.
