Today, the trial of "multi-level marketing boss" Le Xuan Giang, more than 6 thousand victims were summoned.

From today, December 21, Hanoi People's Court opened a 10-day first instance trial to try the case.Fraudulent appropriation of propertyoccurred at Vietnam Trade Production Joint Stock Company (Lien Ket Viet), 5 years after the case was initiated.

Mr. Le Xuan Giang, Chairman of the Board of Directors of Lien Ket Viet, and 7 subordinates were accused by the Supreme People's Procuracy of impersonating a business under the Ministry of National Defense, luring more than 68,000 victims into the system.multi-level marketing, fraud profited more than 2,000 billion VND.

Mr. Giang served in the army and was discharged in 2001. Starting the fraud scheme, 4 years later, he founded and became Chairman of the Board of Directors of the BQP Medical Equipment Corporation, specializing in the production of ozone detoxification machines and functional foods. In 2010, Giang continued to establish Lien Ket Viet Company and applied for a multi-level marketing license for BQP products.

Le Xuan Giang at the company's one-year anniversary of multi-level marketing operations.

Functional foods priced at 10,000-14,000 VND/pill, advertised by Lien Ket Viet with many miraculous uses... but in fact "do not meet the conditions for consumption on the market", according to the conclusion of the National Institute for Food Safety and Hygiene Control.

At that time, apart from his nephew Le Van Tu who was appointed General Director of Lien Ket Viet, Mr. Giang did not have many subordinates. Having a multi-level marketing business license but low sales, Mr. Giang realized that he had to "recruit" an experienced management team.

In March 2014, when opening a transaction office in Hanoi, Mr. Giang hired a team of 5 people led by Nguyen Thi Thuy to manage and develop the company's multi-level system and everything began to change.

The plan to impersonate a unit under the Ministry of National Defense was carried out by Mr. Giang even before Lien Ket Viet was granted a license to operate a multi-level marketing business.

The indictment shows that in March 2013, Mr. Giang only asked to sign a confirmation of the idea of ​​producing ozone detoxification machines with Thanh Ha Company - Ministry of National Defense without cooperating in production and business. However, he directed to print on all ozone detoxification machines of the Ministry of National Defense the words "This product is produced by the Ministry of National Defense in cooperation with Thanh Ha Company, Ministry of National Defense".

This trick was also used by Giang to scam and promote a series of functional foods mentioned above, which were products of "scientific research cooperation" with central military hospitals. In fact, the investigation agency determined that the certificates were all drafted by Giang himself in advance, in order to confuse buyers about the origin.

In January 2014, BQP Company was certified as "a Vietnamese product with sustainable development". Although it is not a business of the Ministry of National Defense, Giang took advantage of the confusion caused by the abbreviation, continued to print this certificate of merit in large format, and hung it at branches and representative offices.

The 3-storey villa in Cam Thuong ward, Hai Duong city is rented as the headquarters of Lien Ket Viet Company, Hai Duong branch.Photo: Giang Chinh

Realizing that many victims paid money to join the multi-level network because they mistakenly thought that the BQP company belonged to the Ministry of National Defense, Giang took advantage of this to create trust and attract more people. Giang directed Thuy's team to promote images of Giang wearing military uniform during working sessions with military hospitals, distributing products...

In an open letter to the victims in early January 2015, Giang wrote "Lien Ket Viet Company is a "soldier" enterprise, established with the mission of trading and developing the market for products researched by the Ministry of National Defense".To strengthen the label of a military enterprise, he invited many retired military officers to hold leadership positions in the company.

This impersonation trick, along with the programs implemented by the advisory team, helped Lien Ket Viet earn tens of thousands of billions of VND. In October 2014, when Thuy and the team were running the 5th sales program, Giang met Pham Van Ut in Ho Chi Minh City.

When Ut boasted that he could help forge the Prime Minister's certificate of merit, Giang decided to "place an order". Receiving 31 million VND, Ut went to a photocopy shop in Tan Binh district, paid 2.7 million VND to have a series of certificates of merit typed and printed in color by the Prime Minister for the Ministry of National Defense, Lien Ket Viet, Giang's uncle and nephew, Tu and other leaders with the content "many achievements in economic development and charity activities, contributing to the cause of building socialism".

Giang directed the team to organize grand receptions for these fake certificates.

Lien Ket Viet determined that the company's strategy would be to "invest, lazy, opportunistic, rich..." During the investigation, the statements of 7,227 victims showed that the reason they paid money to Lien Ket Viet all had something in common. That is, "they wanted higher interest rates than bank deposits, they didn't have to do anything to have money, they had both money and health."

Playing on the greed and desire to get rich quickly of the victims, Thuy's team advised Giang and Tu on a total of 15 promotional programs in less than 2 years, earning more than 2,000 billion VND.

March 26, 2014, the first day Giang "recruited" Thuy to Lien Ket Viet, Thuy's team immediately presented and got Giang's approval for 2 programs at the same time.Humanitarian Support Diagram Customer AppreciationandSuccessful launch, earning 96 billion VND after 4 months.

Thuy admitted to using programs from other multi-level marketing companies to edit and apply to Lien Ket Viet. With the first program, the victim paid 7 million VND to buy a product code and would receive a profit of 409 million VND. At the same time, the more people she attracted to pay, the more % commission and many different types of commission she would receive, get promoted, travel abroad for free and be given villas, cars, etc.

To expand the network, in July 2014, Giang opened provincial and city-level agencies with detailed commission rates for office managers. Specifically, when a victim was lured to pay 7 million VND, the branch received 500,000 VND... A year later, Giang had 34 more branches, paying them a total of more than 55 billion VND.

The team, under Giang's direction, organized award ceremonies, promotions, and honors at large event centers, with a scale of organizing thousands of people.

The Supreme People's Procuracy concluded that these promotional programs were not registered, their content was illegal, and their nature was multi-level marketing in the form of a pyramid scheme, using money from later people to pay earlier people, not from sales to make a profit. The victims were therefore promised that even if they did not buy the products, they could still become distributors, "partners" of the company.

When they first paid, the victims were paid full interest every month, so they lured and enticed more friends and family members to join. But then the interest gradually decreased and stopped in November 2015.

As a result of the investigation, more than 6,000 victims summoned to the trial bought about 67,000 goods and paid more than 584 billion VND to Lien Ket Viet Company, while the commission received was only 122 billion VND.

Of the more than 2,000 billion VND collected from 15 promotional programs, Giang and his accomplices confessed to having appropriated more than 1,000 billion VND, the rest was used to pay commissions, bonuses, and maintain the apparatus.