Impersonating recruitment officers to scam and traffic people to Laos and Myanmar.
On July 1st, the Investigation Police Department of Dien Bien province issued a decision to initiate a criminal case, indict and temporarily detain three individuals for the crime of "human trafficking".
The arrested individuals are Tong Duc Ngoc (born in 2003), residing in Muong Nha commune; Nong Van Su (born in 1995), residing in Thanh Nua commune, Dien Bien province; and Phan Hoang Tuan Anh (born in 2001), residing in Dinh Quan commune, Dong Nai province.
Previously, through intelligence gathering, the Dien Bien Provincial Police discovered that between the end of 2023 and June 2025, Tong Duc Ngoc colluded with Nong Van Su and Phan Hoang Tuan Anh to lure and transport 9 people from the communes of Na Tong, Muong Nha, and Phu Luong in Dien Bien province to Laos and Myanmar.
However, the victims were not given the jobs they were promised, but were forced to do online scams, had their documents and phones confiscated, lived in cramped spaces, were watched over, and had to follow the scammers' instructions for the required time or pay a ransom of tens of millions of dong to be allowed to return home.
Recognizing the seriousness of the incident, the Dien Bien Provincial Police coordinated with the Criminal Police Department of the Ministry of Public Security to establish a special task force to investigate.
Through investigative measures, the special task force gathered sufficient documents and evidence of the suspects' crimes. On June 28th, the three suspects were summoned to the Dien Bien Provincial Police for questioning. At the police station, the suspects initially denied the charges. However, faced with irrefutable evidence, they eventually confessed to their crimes.
Tong Van Ngoc used deceptive tactics, portraying himself as a recruitment officer working abroad, bringing people to Laos and Myanmar for easy, high-paying jobs such as sales and online sales, earning 25 million VND per month without any paperwork, procedures, or travel costs.
Nong Van Su and Phan Hoang Tuan Anh handled the paperwork and brought the victims across the border. Upon successfully bringing the victims to work, the perpetrators received 35 million VND per victim from the fraudulent companies in the Golden Triangle Economic Zone, Laos; and 3.5 million VND per victim from companies in Myanmar, plus their monthly salaries. To date, Tong Van Ngoc has received nearly 200 million VND in total.
