On Aug. 17 police in Ninh Binh Province arrested a person with the Facebook username ‘Chang Kho’ (rough translation: Mr. Fool) for allegedly making acquaintance with single women in Hanoi and Nam Dinh and Hai Duong provinces and scamming them out of hundreds of millions of dong (VND100 million= $4,246).
A few days earlier, according to police in Binh Phuoc Province, an S’tieng ethnic woman was similarly duped.
In both cases the men approached single women on social media and pretended to be successful businessmen.
They then tried to create sympathy for themselves by saying they had unhappy marriages and divorced their wives.
Claiming to live abroad, they promised the women they would come to Vietnam to build a new life with them.
After ostensibly building trust over a period of time, the scammers said they wanted to send some expensive gifts to the women to show how serious they were about the relationships.
They then sprung the trap.
Hoa of Ho Chi Minh City, who is separated from her husband, was one of the victims.
She says: “At first that person sent me a friend request on Facebook. His account did not seem like a fake account. He had family photos on it. So I accepted his friend request without any precaution.
“Then he texted me. He claimed to be a Japanese living in the Netherlands, working in real estate and very successful. It was his bait.”
The man told her he had a daughter. After a few months, when his daughter’s birthday was coming close, he claimed to have bought…
