The 'money-swallowing' tricks of the labor export fraud ring

From the complaints…

Nearly 4 years ago, Ms. NTT (Dien Chau) transferred nearly 200 million VND to Tran Thi Thu so that her eldest daughter could go to Korea. But until now, even though her daughter has "settled down", she still cannot go to Korea. The family has met Thu many times to ask for the money back, but the amount her family received is not worth much.

Mrs. NTT shared: At that time, the family also wanted her to go to work there to earn money to pay off the debt as well as earn some capital to start a business. Believing Thu, we sold the rice field to run for our child. However, until now, there is no job, and we have only received back more than 30 million VND.

The case of Mrs. NTT's family is just a few of the 64 families that fell into the trap of the "super-fraud" director.

Around mid-2019, many complaints from all over the province were sent to the Nghe An Provincial Police Investigation Agency. All the complaints had the same content showing signs of being scammed by a labor export company in the area.

Based on the basic information in the complaints, a number of investigators were sent to collect evidence. Through initial investigation, it was found that the unit that received money to help the victims' families go to work abroad was Future Nghe An International Education System Company Limited located at 113 Dang Thai Mai (Vinh City, Nghe An). This company hung an advertisement that it could send people to study abroad or work abroad to countries such as Australia, Taiwan, Korea, Singapore, etc. The head and director of the company is Ms. Tran Thi Thu (born in 1983), residing in Nghi Kim Commune, Vinh City, Nghe An Province.

However, at the time of the investigation, the company headquarters was “locked and bolted”, and no one could contact the company’s operator. In addition, investigators said that the information printed on the billboard was not consistent with the content of the operating license granted to the company. Determining this to be a large-scale fraud, investigators narrowed down the suspects and detained the company director for investigation.

On May 20, 2020, Tran Thi Thu was arrested by the Nghe An Provincial Police Investigation Agency, but because she was pregnant, she was released on bail to serve the investigation. At the investigation agency, Tran Thi Thu confessed to all of her fraudulent acts of property appropriation.

Unfinished dreams

In October 2018, Tran Thi Thu established Future Nghe An International Education System Company Limited. Thu is the director of this company. Although the company does not have the function of sending workers to work abroad under contract, Thu still posts recruitment and training notices for workers who want to work in Korea, Canada, Japan, Australia...

To gain the trust of those who want to work or travel abroad, Thu uses Facebook, Zalo and many advertising sites to post job orders for workers to work at Samsung companies in Korea, Canada and procedures to travel to some European countries with the commitment of "paying money when the person accepts the job".

Through the information posted by Thu, many workers in Nghe An and Ha Tinh trusted and came to the company's headquarters to ask for advice and register to go abroad. All people who came to the company were committed by Thu that after 6 months from the date of submitting the application, the workers could fly.

In order to increase the trust of those who want to go abroad, Tran Thi Thu rents a location and teachers to organize Korean and English classes to serve those who want to go abroad to work... In addition to meeting all the documents to go abroad, workers must pay for foreign language classes, orientation classes and costs to complete procedures.

All the workers said that Tran Thi Thu required the workers to fully complete the initial payments. Ms. Thu required them to exchange to USD to pay, not allowing them to pay in Vietnamese Dong.

However, when all the workers had paid and the crash courses had taken a few sessions, at the end of May 2019, Future International Education System Company Limited suddenly stopped organizing the classes. Many people were very surprised when not only the classes but also the company closed for unknown reasons. Suspecting something was wrong, the families of the workers tried to contact the company director, but this person had an evasive attitude.

With the desire to have capital to open a phone store, Ms. PTPT (Nghi Loc) also chose to go abroad to earn capital to do business. With the promise that they would be able to "go abroad" 6 months after submitting the application, Ms. PTPT's family collected 120 million VND to pay Thu to do the initial procedures. However, the dream of owning a store has now disappeared, not only that, but also left her family with a large debt.

According to some workers, in early 2018, Tran Thi Thu worked as a representative office for a labor export company headquartered in Hanoi. She was assigned to work as an office staff at the Vinh City branch. Tran Thi Thu's only task was to advise and collect documents from workers who wanted to work abroad and then transfer them to the main company.

However, after a while, Thu quit her job with the excuse of starting her own company. With her greed, Thu created a job trap that made many workers not suspicious. Only when the company headquarters closed did many people realize they had been tricked.

Through investigation, the Nghe An Provincial Police Department concluded that within just 2 years, 64 workers from Nghe An, Ha Tinh, and Quang Ninh fell into the trap of the "slightly" director Tran Thi Thu, with the amount of money embezzled amounting to nearly 3 billion VND.

Director "slightly" appeared in court

End of March 2021,Nghe An Provincial People's Court opened the first instance criminal trial of defendant Tran Thi Thu (born 1983), residing in Nghi Kim commune, Vinh city, Nghe An province, for the crime of "Fraudulent appropriation of property".

At the trial, Tran Thi Thu admitted to the crime as charged in the indictment. Defendant Thu said that, understanding the needs of many workers, Thu established a company and used a lot of false information to make the victims believe that she could send people abroad. From there, she appropriated the victims' money to both serve the company's operations and for personal expenses.

However, when asked about the compensation for the victims, Tran Thi Thu replied that she was currently unable to pay and could not compensate. Thu's answer before the jury made many workers angry. One person said: "Believe Thu, we had to borrow money to pay, there were families of 3-4 people who registered to go, losing hundreds of millions of dong. Unable to go, having to take on debt caused family discord, and the couple separated due to the pressure of debt. I request the jury to give Tran Thi Thu a very severe sentence and force defendant Thu to return the money to us."

At the trial, many workers shared that because Thu promised that they would definitely be able to fly, they decided to quit their jobs at the company they had worked for many years. But after a long wait, they still did not receive labor contracts to work abroad. Because they had to borrow money to pay Thu and had no income after quitting their jobs, their family life was affected. Many families had conflicts over money.

The People's Court determined that the People's Procuracy of Nghe An province prosecuted Tran Thi Thu for the crime of "Fraudulent appropriation of property" is the right person, the right crime, the right law. Thu's actions have caused damage to workers, affected local security and order, and the amount of money embezzled is large.

At the time of trial, Tran Thi Thu was raising a child under 36 months old and had compensated a number of workers with more than 100 million VND,... so she was entitled to mitigating circumstances according to the regulations. Considering the case as a whole, the panel sentenced Tran Thi Thu to 18 years in prison, the prison term calculated from the time of execution of the sentence. The court also ordered defendant Thu to repay the remaining 2.8 billion VND to the victims.

At the trial, the panel of judges also sent a message to the victims in particular as well as workers who intend to study and work abroad to find out specific information related to labor export service companies, and to find out the operating licenses and information of the companies on the electronic information pages prescribed by the State.