The real estate company's 'chicken herding' trick was just raided by the police
Nguyen Van An hired more than 120 employees to build a fraudulent organization disguised as a real estate company to "herd chickens" and "force" customers to put down deposits.
Dong Nai police said that they have just dismantled a fraud organization selling "ghost projects" of Nguyen Van An (27 years old, General Director of Loc Phuc Company headquartered in Tan Binh District, Ho Chi Minh City) and hundreds of employees.
Initially, the employees confessed that since June 2022, Loc Phuc Company has organizedvirtual real estate trading floorin Dong Nai with sophisticated tricks to defraud and appropriate property of some customers who wanted to buy beautiful, cheap houses.
Accordingly, Nguyen Van An built a fraud organization disguised as a real estate company. This organization operated very sophisticatedly, with a script, and assigned ranks to each person.
Specifically, An hired more than 120 employees and 20 others to pretend to be customers. Of these, about 100 were students and interns working for the company. An instructed the students to go to social networking sites, find beautiful houses in Ho Chi Minh City, take pictures, and post them on the company's website and Cho Tot to introduce them for sale to customers.
When the “prey” asked to see a house in Ho Chi Minh City, Loc Phuc Company employees used a phone number (a junk SIM) to contact the customer and then made an appointment to go to a coffee shop that had been pre-arranged by the company.
At the meeting point, hundreds of employees and “wooden legs” waited for customers to arrive, then “herded” them into 52-seat cars, covered the windows, and drove them straight to the company’s “ghost project” in Dong Nai. On the way, the employees organized games with prizes to distract customers and keep them from getting impatient because the journey took so long.
On the bus, the “wooden legs” will sit among the customers, communicate with them to create intimacy, then attract and entice them to buy real estate together. The money for the “wooden legs” is all prepared by the company. Customers see the “wooden legs” put down a deposit and follow suit.
Arriving at the location of the “ghost project” built by the company, the employees presented the self-designed drawings. Then, the “wooden legs” were tasked with accompanying the customers. At this time, the company’s employees surrounded them to introduce products with values many times higher than the actual value of the land. The employees urged the customers to put down a deposit while the “wooden legs” were tasked with influencing their psychology and creating trust in the customers.
When the customer agrees to deposit about 100 million VND, the company will write a receipt. "Wooden legs" go with the customer to the 7-seat car to the company. The sales manager and staff continue to influence the customer to deposit an additional 60% - 70% of the transaction value of the land. If the customer discovers that the land is worth more than the actual value and requests a refund of the deposit, the staff will refuse. In case the customer complains or denounces, the staff directly dealing with that customer will cancel the junk SIM and block communication.
Using this method, Loc Phuc Company bought agricultural land for several hundred million VND, then drew up its own project and advertised it for sale for 2-3 billion VND. The police estimated that each month this company appropriated about 20 billion VND from the people. Up to now, this number could be up to hundreds of billions.