Nearly 1 year of hunting down debt collectors

Debt collection regardless of the law

On March 28, nearly a hundred police officers arrived at the building on Nguyen Dang Giai Street, Thao Dien Ward, Thu Duc City - the headquarters of Home Credit Vietnam Finance Company Limited. The police worked with the company's leaders and employees, and also inspected a number of financial and lending activities suspected of violations.

Home Credit Vietnam Finance Company Limited was established and has been operating in Vietnam since 2008, providing "fast, convenient and friendly" installment consumer finance products. Home Credit is currently headquartered in Ho Chi Minh City, with a branch in Hanoi, 8 representative offices and more than 9,000 service points in 63 provinces and cities nationwide. The consumer finance company is present in 10 countries such as Russia, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Kazakhstan, China, Vietnam, India and has total assets of up to 14.7 billion Euros.

Also on March 28, hundreds of police officers were present at Linh Tay apartment building, Linh Tay ward, Thu Duc city (HCMC) to inspect Galaxy debt trading company, headquartered on the 1st and 2nd floors of Linh Tay Tower building. This company is registered to do business in debt trading and financial activities. Currently, the authorities have not provided any information about this inspection.

These are two of a series of recent police inspections and arrests of financial companies and mafia-style debt collection rings disguised as law firms.

Police searched a financial company. Photo: CACC

Previously, in mid-May 2022, Nghe An Newspaper had a series of articles"Terrorist debt collection is rampant", reflecting the situation where many people, leaders of agencies and schools, even though they did not borrow money, were threatened and "terrorized" in many ways to collect debts. Some teachers could not even stand the pressure when they were not only attacked by their families and themselves but also regularly "terrorized" the leaders and all teachers in the school, and had toapply for leave. In one case, because a parent had not paid back the debt, debt collectors found the phone numbers of more than 100 teachers in the entire school to attack. In another school, because a teacher’s relative had borrowed money, the school leader had his photo edited and put on the altar, defamed and slandered. They even impersonated the school to ship gas cylinders to the school to threaten him. There was a leader of the Department of Education and Training who had to receive thousands of abusive phone calls every day…

Many people in these cases said they had never borrowed money from any individual or organization before. However, some people admitted to borrowing money online from some financial companies but were not able to pay it back.

Immediately afterwards, on May 24, 2022, the Criminal Police Department of Hanoi Police coordinated with the Criminal Police Department (Ministry of Public Security) to dismantle the above transnational illegal credit ring. 300 suspects across the country were summoned, including many foreigners. According to the initial investigation, borrowers only need to take a photo of their ID card or citizen ID card, then use their phone contacts as collateral and send it via the app. When they find that someone is unable to pay, the lending group will direct the debt collection department to text, call to threaten, and terrorize them and their relatives and relationships in the phone contacts. In many cases, they cut and paste the borrower's image and post it on social media to smear and force them to quickly pay the debt.

A woman who led a "terrorist" debt collection group was arrested. Photo: CACC

Huge profits

On November 4, 2022, the police agency conducted an administrative inspection of the Mirae Asset Finance Company Limited Office, then temporarily detained and prosecuted 13 people for the crime of Slander. This is a foreign company, headquartered in Vietnam in Ho Chi Minh City, with LJ (Korean nationality) as General Director; licensed by the State Bank, with the function of "lending, including installment loans, consumer loans".

The trick of this company's employees is that borrowers must provide personal information and information about relatives when signing a loan contract with the company; interest rates from 4.58%/month, equivalent to 55%/year in the form of monthly installments. When customers reach the payment deadline, the debt collection department will divide customers according to the debt level. For the group of debts over 180 days, employees use phones, social media accounts to call, text, curse, threaten or cut out images of borrowers, relatives to combine with funeral obituaries, obscene photos, notices to find debtors, fraud warnings... to send to customers, relatives, friends, colleagues of borrowers via social networks Zalo, Facebook to pressure borrowers to pay their debts.

On December 1, 2022, Ho Chi Minh City Police temporarily detained and prosecuted 13 people from Power Law Company Limited on charges of Slander to collect debt. The investigation agency determined that about 300 victims nationwide had their reputations defamed by this group of people and were forced to pay their debts. Not only the borrowers, but also their relatives, friends and colleagues had their photos edited with bad, false content posted online to ridicule them.

A group of people who specialize in making "terrorist" phone calls to collect debts. Photo: CACC

On February 14, dozens of armed police raided the headquarters of Phap Viet Law Firm (HCMC), caught nearly 130 people red-handed with signs of debt collection, and seized many exhibits. This law firm had been registered to operate for about two years.

The investigation agency has identified thousands of people who were subjected to this company's gangster-style debt collection. In connection with this case, the police have temporarily detained Tran Van Chau, Ho Quoc Hung (Deputy Director of Phap Viet Company), Nguyen Dinh Thanh (Head of Department and Team Leader) and at least 13 others for the act of Extortion and signs of terrorism.

This group was accused of using the name of a law firm, cooperating with banks, financial companies... to "handle bad debts". Afterwards, the law firm's people carried out gangster-style debt collection acts, terrorizing debtors such as: making threatening phone calls, texting; placing gas tanks, bringing coffins to homes, threatening; threatening to blow up the bodies of the "debtors" or their relatives to force them to pay.

In Can Tho, on March 3, the police arrested Vo Thi Bich Tuyen (32 years old, residing in Long My, Hau Giang), the leader of a group of women who specialize in organizing debt collection via apps. When raiding a house, the police discovered 10 people, all women, performing debt collection acts for Bamboo Company; collecting debt from online loan apps, the suspects initially stated that they were run by Chinese people. The group of debt collection suspects led by Tuyen were all from other places, renting a house to participate in the above debt collection ring.

On March 5, Hanoi police prosecuted and detained 31 people to investigate the act of Extortion of property. Among them, Tran Hong Tien, residing in Ho Chi Minh City, is the system's executive director. This group established 7 companies, buying debts that customers had borrowed from financial companies and some other credit institutions but were unable to pay. Then, they used many tricks to "terrorize" the debtors' spirit. Data from the companies' management systems showed that from July 2018 to the end of 2022, the group purchased more than 330,000 loan contracts with a total amount of thousands of billions of VND; and collected about 500 billion VND.

On March 6, Ho Chi Minh City Police coordinated with Go Vap District Police to block off a section of road to search F88 Company - a large-scale financial lending company. Initially, the investigation agency believed that debt collectors here had threatened borrowers in the past, suspecting signs of property extortion.

On March 15, Ho Chi Minh City Police temporarily detained 14 people, including managers, leaders, and employees of Vietnam Thinh Vuong Debt Trading Joint Stock Company (Ward 1, Tan Binh District) and the branch of Young Generation Law Company Limited (Ward 15, Tan Binh District) for the act of Extortion of property. In which, Nguyen Minh Thanh (manager of Vietnam Thinh Vuong Debt Trading Joint Stock Company) and Tran Ha Anh Thu (Head of Credit Department, Young Generation Law Company Limited) played the leading role.

Previously, Ho Chi Minh City Police received many calls for help from people, saying that young men claiming to be debt collectors continuously called to threaten them, sent images of a terrorist nature, slandered them, and insulted their dignity on social networks. Even their friends, relatives, and workplaces were threatened by these people. During the investigation, the police determined that the people who committed acts of terrorism to collect debts were employees of Vietnam Thinh Vuong Debt Trading Joint Stock Company and a branch of Young Generation Law Company Limited. They were assigned tasks by their bosses according to their ranks (employees, managers, team leaders); applied debt collection sales targets, and paid progressive commissions on the total amount of debt collected.

These two companies bought the borrowers’ files from a financial company based in Hanoi. The employees of Vietnam Prosperity Debt Trading Joint Stock Company were divided into four teams, each team had 7-10 people. Each month, an average employee made 2,500-3,000 terrorist calls to collect debts, with a total amount of VND2-3 billion collected.

Police said that with the above frequency of debt collection, more than 100 people have to pay their debts and interest to this debt collection group every month. Each time the debt collection is successful, the debt collector will be paid up to 86% by the financial company in Hanoi (where the debt is sold). Because the profits are so high, the leaders of the debt collection companies have directed their employees to relentlessly terrorize the victims with high frequency and intensity.