Prosecuted female hui owner for defrauding people, appropriating 10 billion VND
The authorities have initiated a case, prosecuting Hoang Thi Thao (born in 1988, residing in Ky Giang commune, Ky Anh district) for the crime of "Fraudulent appropriation of property".
According to the Criminal Investigation Agency of Ky Anh District Police (Ha Tinh), in 2014, Hoang Thi Thao started doing small-scale trading 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 let everyone draw lots to buy the hui money for that month.
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 contributedsavings and loan associationThao bought a lot so she also had more income. However, from around 2017 onwards, the number of people buying monthly hui became less and less, so Thao deliberately bought back the hui money 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 some other people to earn interest.
Because the business was not profitable, Thao had to pay interest to the participants every month, and when the hui draw period came, 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 her hui. Thao continued to pay higher interest rates in some other hui chains to attract people to continue paying hui in her place. When the principal repayment period came, she deliberately delayed or borrowed the money back, accepting to pay high interest.
At the end of 2022, when he had mortgaged all his 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 some people, including borrowing money from the hui members up to billions of dong.
Up to now, the Investigation Police Agency of Ky Anh District Police has received 56 petitions from citizens accusing Hoang Thi Thao of appropriating more than 10 billion VND.
The case is under investigation.
