Vietnamese woman wanted for helping foreigners' swindle
The Danang police have put out an international warrant for a 35-year-old Vietnamese woman for colluding with unidentified foreign men to swindle her compatriots.
According to investigators, Vo Thi Xuan Lan of Ho Chi Minh City helped foreign men swindle Vietnamese women by promising to get them foreign husbands who would take them abroad for a better life.
In 2012 they created a Facebook page in the name of Donald Jack, who claimed to be a divorced engineer from the US.
They would win the victims' trust, promise them valuable gifts and to send them to the US.
Then Lan would telephone the victims claiming to be an airport customs officer, and demand taxes of hundreds of millions of dong.
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| Vo Thi Xuan Lan, 35, is being hunted internationally for allegedly colluding with foreigners to swindle Vietnamese women. Photo: Nguyen Tu |
Ten victims have complained so far to the Danang police after being conned out of more than VND700 million (US$31,500).
The police have urged other victims to come forward.
In another swindle, a woman in Ba Ria Vung Tau has reported about being conned out of VND130 million.
The victim, identified only as English teacher H of Long Dien District, reported to the local police that in July she had made friends on Facebook with a man named Etienn Maltese Bartolo.
Bartolo claimed to be an American soldier in Syria. Later he claimed to have found a large sum of money and asked H to keep it for him.
The money had been transferred to Vietnam and was being kept at Hanoi’s Noi Bai Airport, he said, and asked H to transfer money to a bank account as a fee.
After she transferred VND130 million and then was asked for more, H recognized it was a swindle and reported to the police.
The police are investigating.