Raising capital to buy a house for auction, man embezzles more than 50 billion VND

According to the investigation, around April 2022, NCH (born in 1986; from Ho Chi Minh City, currently residing in Da Nang) had the intention of defrauding people working at the same real estate company operating in Da Nang to have money to gamble online.

To carry out the act, H. devised a scenario to provide false information that he had many relationships with people working in the banking industry in Ho Chi Minh City, and knew a lot of information about sources of houses at rock-bottom prices (homeowners selling at prices lower than the bank's valuation) or sources of houses foreclosed by banks.

Then, H. called on his colleagues to invest capital to buy these houses and then resell them at a higher price to make a profit. This man agreed to pay a profit percentage of 3% of the total value of the house to the investors.

Police working with H. (left). Photo: Provided by police

Trusting, many victims agreed to contribute capital with an initial amount of 30 to 40 million VND.

At first, H. performed on time and paid the commission as committed, so the participants became more confident and continued to contribute money to invest in the next real estate properties with the capital contribution increasing over time, sometimes up to 1 billion VND.

All capital contribution transactions were exchanged and confirmed by H. via social network messages on Facebook and Zalo. H. used the capital contribution to gamble online and lost it all, so later on he was no longer able to pay back the investors.

According to the investigation agency, by the above method, H. has appropriated more than 50 billion VND from many victims, in which the police agency has worked and received complaints from victims with the amount of money swindled of more than 16 billion VND.

The Department of Cyber ​​Security and Technology Crime Prevention (Da Nang City Police) said it has decided to prosecute the criminal case "Fraudulent appropriation of property”, continue to conduct an extended investigation and carry out procedural steps to transfer the case file and the suspect to the City Police Investigation Agency for handling according to its authority.