Female director swindled billions from dozens of people who wanted to work abroad

The Hanoi People's Procuracy has just completed the indictment to prosecute defendant Nguyen Thi Phong (born 1983, in Ha Dong district) for the crime of"Fraudulent appropriation of property".

According to the indictment, Hai Phong Labor Supply and Trade Joint Stock Company (Halasuco), with Mr. Lai Duy D. (born 1955) as General Director, was granted a license to operate labor export.

In April 2018, Mr. D. signed a decision to establish the Labor Export Training Center (Halasuco Center) in Ha Dong District, Hanoi. The company appointed defendant Nguyen Thi Phong as Director.

The investigation agency said that Halasuco Center has no legal status, no private seal, and is not allowed to collect fees for labor export services. In 2019, due to business losses and needing money to spend, Ms. Phong used the name of Halasuco Company to introduce people to work in Japan.

The defendant carved a square seal “Hai Phong Labor Supply and Trade Joint Stock Company – Hanoi branch” and stamped it on the receipts with the intention of gaining the trust of the victims.

Through collaborators, Ms. Phong provided a lot of information showing that the company recruited workers to go to Japan to do jobs such as painting ship hulls, plastic molding, food packaging, food processing... with salaries from 25-32 million VND/month.

Depending on the job, Ms. Phong offers a cost of 120-160 million VND/worker (including language learning, accommodation, anti-violation, document deposit, visa guarantee) and commits that after about 6-8 months the worker will be able to go to Japan to work.

When collecting money, Ms. Phong asked the workers to transfer cash or money to the collaborators' accounts. In addition, Ms. Phong also represented the company to write a commitment with the workers.

Investigation results showed that after collecting money from the workers, Ms. Phong did not transfer the money to the company but used it all for personal expenses. The defendant also did not carry out labor export procedures as promised.

Using the above tricks, from February to July 2020, defendant Phong appropriated more than 2.6 billion VND from 29 victims.

The indictment shows that, through her contact, Ms. Thai Thi H. (in Nghe An), Ms. Phong appropriated more than 1.2 billion VND from 16 workers. Specifically, Ms. Phong and Ms. H. cooperated and introduced workers to each other many times.

At that time, Ms. H. was working as a recruiter for a company in Nghe An. Ms. Phong agreed with Ms. H. that she would pay 500 USD/person if she successfully introduced workers to go abroad.

According to information provided by Ms. Phong, Ms. H. sent a list of 16 workers for Ms. Phong to send them to Japan to work, along with more than 1.2 billion VND in fees.

Although she promised that the workers would be able to leave the country after about 6 months, when the deadline came, Ms. Phong did not fulfill her commitment and did not return the money to the workers.

Realizing that Mrs. Phong could not take care of the exported workers, Ms. H. had to pay them back out of her own pocket. The victims authorized Ms. H. to file a complaint against Mrs. Phong with the police.

Many other victims were also defrauded of their property by Ms. Phong using similar tricks.