Monday, August 4, 2025 - Police in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam have proposed prosecuting 21 individuals, including two Nigerian nationals and 19 Vietnamese, for allegedly laundering money and illegally transporting currency across borders, Vietnam News reported on Monday, August 4.
According to investigators, the group allegedly used
technology to hack into emails of companies engaged in economic contract
negotiations, creating fake emails with addresses nearly identical to
legitimate partners—differing by only one character.
They directed associates in Vietnam to establish shell
companies with foreign names closely resembling partners of the victim
companies, opening foreign and Vietnamese currency bank accounts to receive
transferred funds.
Upon receiving funds into the foreign currency accounts, the
group converted the money into Vietnamese dong and transferred it to the shell
company accounts.
From there, the funds were further dispersed into various
personal accounts before being withdrawn and handed over to the fraudsters.
One case involved December One Rnd Ltd, a company based in
Ukraine, which was conducting transactions with Sungsan Electronics &
Communications via the email address sungsan@rfzone.com.
Starting on December 6, 2023, unknown individuals began
contacting December One Rnd Ltd
through sungsan@rfz0ne.com and sungsan@rfzones.com to
provide new banking details.
On March 8, 2024, December One Rnd Ltd transferred
US$314,850 to the account specified in the fraudulent emails and informed their
partner. However, the actual partner company never received the funds, as they
had not changed their bank account
On March 21, 2024, the Ukrainian Embassy in Vietnam
contacted local bank VietinBank to request the freezing of the recipient
account, but the bank reported that the account holder had already withdrawn
all the money.
On April 2, 2024, the Ukrainian Embassy in Vietnam formally
requested the Ho Chi Minh City police to investigate the case.
According to the investigation, in late 2023, Mai Tra My,
who is married to a Nigerian national and currently resides in Nigeria,
instructed Mai Vu Minh to establish multiple companies in Vietnam to open bank
accounts for receiving foreign transfers.
Minh then converted the funds into Vietnamese dong and
either handed the cash to associates or made transfers to accounts specified by
My.
Minh received a two-percent commission on all received
funds.
Between December 15, 2023 and March 11, 2024, Minh used
three of nine companies under his name to receive a total of $789,057 from
foreign businesses, including December One Rnd Ltd.
He successfully converted the funds into Vietnamese dong,
which was transferred to other personal accounts under My’s instructions. Minh
pocketed more than VND383 million ($14,615).
Additionally, under My’s direction, Minh transferred VND10
billion ($381,927) in cash to Cambodia to My through the Kingfood bird's nest
facility in Ho Chi Minh City.
In late 2019, Le Thi Tham, then working as a factory worker
in Ho Chi Minh City, met Nigerian national Okoye Christina Ikechukwu. They
developed a relationship and got married in 2020.
From 2020 to 2023, the couple lived together in various
locations in Ho Chi Minh City, with Tham working in a factory and
Ikechukwy working as a construction laborer.
In February 2023, after Tham was involved in a traffic
accident, a Nigerian friend of Ikechukwu visited them and proposed that
the couple join the money laundering network, offering a 3–7-percent commission
on withdrawn funds. Tham and Ikechukwy agreed.
From January 2022 to April 2024, Tham established 53
companies, four of which received a total of nearly $1.5 million. Tham and
Ikechukwu earned about VND2 billion ($76,462).
Similarly, in late 2022, while working as a food delivery
driver, Nguyen Thi Thanh Thuy met a Nigerian woman named Selena. Selena hired
Thuy to register businesses and open bank accounts, paying VND2 million
($7,640) per company.
Thuy established five companies and was paid VND10 million
($382).
In March 2023, Selena introduced Eneh Davidson Caleb,
another Nigerian national, to Thuy. The two developed a relationship and moved
in together.
Following the instructions of Selena and Caleb, from late
2022 to April 2024, Thuy established 112 companies. She received VND224 million
($8,555) for company registrations and a two-percent commission on received
funds, totaling VND598.8 million ($22,857) in earnings.
By August 2023, due to concerns over owning too many
companies and facilitating illicit fund transfers, Thuy stopped registering
companies herself.
She then recruited Nguyen Thi Huong, who was facing
financial difficulties, to register companies for VND2 million ($7,640) each.
From August 2023 to April 2024, Huong established 116
companies and was paid over VND232 million ($8,861).
Together, the companies under Thuy’s and Huong’s names
received over $3 million and more than €2.9 million ($3.4 million) from foreign
companies.
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