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On June 17, Hanoi Police announced that 21 cases have been prosecuted involving 187 defendants in schemes to buy and transfer ownership rights of holiday properties.
At the police station, Hoang Nhat Long, CEO of SunLand Travel, said his initial aim was to take as much money from customers as possible, adding that the idea of defrauding money occurred at the same time.
Huynh Quanh Anh, a consultant for the company, said she received a fixed salary of 5 million VND per month plus a 6% commission on contract value. She also stated that promises of refunds after 30–60 days were only promises, without any guaranteed basis.
Khuc Thuy Diem, the company’s chief executive officer, testified that she was responsible for managing, training, and guiding staff. Diem said the company’s business policy was incorrect and expressed remorse for what happened.
Investigators found that the individuals established multiple companies operating a “timeshare ownership” model. They used free resort vouchers to invite customers to seminars, where travel packages priced from 200 to 900 million VND were advertised to persuade attendees to sign contracts.
To encourage customers to sign, sales staff reportedly offered attractive terms such as steep discounts, easy transferability, or high profit potential. Many customers paid hundreds of millions of VND to buy the “timeshare ownership” packages after trusting these advertisements.
When customers sought to transfer ownership, the suspects reportedly set up additional brokerage companies, used customer data to contact them, and promised to resell contracts at significantly higher profits.
To complete transactions, customers were asked to pay further charges, including reservation fees, upgrade fees, or to purchase additional vacation packages. While brokers reportedly promised transfers would be completed within 1 to 1.5 months, contract terms were said to extend up to 10 years, making it difficult for customers to cancel or seek compensation.
Investigators determined that the companies did not actually transfer or lease out holidays to any customer. Most of the proceeds were used to pay salaries and bonuses for staff and for personal expenditures of the individuals involved.
Preliminarily, authorities identified 493 victims, with the total amount embezzled exceeding 181.4 billion VND. In searches related to the case, more than 16.6 billion VND in cash was seized, nearly 59.8 billion VND was blocked in accounts, and authorities confiscated 7 cars, 10 land-use certificates, and 3 savings books valued at 12 billion VND.
Hanoi Police said they are continuing to broaden the investigation, consolidate files, and recover embezzled assets.
Ready Card users outside the European Economic Area have reportedly faced an abrupt service halt after a transition involving the card issuer disrupted the USDC spending product, according to user notices shared on X.
A notice shared…
