Prosecution of female hui owner for defrauding people, appropriating 10 billion VND

According to the Criminal Investigation Agency of Ky Anh District Police (Ha Tinh), in 2014, Hoang Thi Thao started doing small business at Voi Market (Ky Anh, Ha Tinh). Since 2015, traders at Voi Market have been contributing to a "hui" and agreed to let Thao be the owner.

At first, Thao allowed players to participate in the hui chains in a profitable way. Each hui chain had 10 participants and each participant had to pay 100,000 VND/day. At the end of the month, when everyone had paid the agreed amount, Thao would let everyone draw lots to buy that month's hui money.

From the second month onwards, those who bought the previous month's hui will no longer receive interest and similarly the last person will no longer have to pay interest.

For the first two years or so, participants contributedrotating savings and credit associationBy buying more, Thao also had more income. However, from around 2017 onwards, the number of people buying monthly savings and credit cards decreased, so Thao deliberately bought back savings and credit cards from the participants and paid them interest every month. With the money she bought back, Thao used it to invest in business and lend it to other people to earn interest.

Because the business was not profitable, Thao had to pay interest to the participants every month, and when the time came to draw the hui, Thao had to pay a large amount of principal. Therefore, Thao came up with a way to change the way the hui was organized, collecting money from later people to pay the principal and interest to the previous people without organizing the hui chains as before.

By around 2019, Hoang Thi Thao was "in debt" so she came up with tricks to get people to continue paying hui for her. Thao continued to pay higher interest in some other hui chains to attract people to continue paying hui at her place. When the principal repayment period came, she deliberately delayed or borrowed that amount of money, accepting to pay high interest.

At the end of 2022, when she had mortgaged all her existing assets to borrow money from the bank to pay off debts for the hui members, Thao provided some false information to borrow money from a number of people, including borrowing money from the hui members up to billions of dong.

Up to now, the Ky Anh District Police Investigation Agency has received 56 petitions from citizens accusing Hoang Thi Thao of appropriating more than 10 billion VND.

The case is under investigation.