Holiday rental hosts arrested for housing Chinese scam suspects on Vietnam’s largest island Phu Quoc

The Security Investigation Agency of the An Giang provincial police said on July 15 it had opened a criminal case against the two, Nguyen Van Dang, 51, and Nguyen Tien Sang, 31.

Both have been held in detention facing charges for organizing for others to stay in Vietnam illegally, an offense that carries one to five years in prison, and up to 15 years where aggravating factors apply.

The case broke on July 3, when a border guard patrol from the Duong Dong Port Border Gate command watched a taxi drive onto a ferry at Bai Vong port on Phu Quoc’s east coast, bound for Ha Tien.

The vessel was a cargo ferry with no license to carry passengers.

Officers stopped the taxi. Inside, alongside a driver registered on the island, were Li Zhong Guo, 46, from Heilongjiang; Chai Ren Shang, 34, from Hainan; Xu Xin Wen, 26, from Hubei; and Zhang Wen Bo, 21, from Guangxi.

None could produce entry documents.

The four told investigators they had crossed into Vietnam from Cambodia without papers and traveled to Phu Quoc to run scams online.

All four were already being sought under an existing police case targeting foreign nationals using technology to defraud victims from the island.

Sang sold airline tickets and ran travel and accommodation services on Phu Quoc, leasing apartments and villas to sublet to guests.

He rented one villa in An Thoi to a Chinese national whose identity has not been established. Under their agreement, Sang stayed responsible for managing the property and filing temporary residence declarations for whoever slept there.

The villa was subleased to a third person, who moved the four Chinese men in.

Sang knew they had no legal documents, according to police, but let them stay because he stood to profit and feared the contract would be canceled and he would owe compensation. He never filed the declarations.

On June 29, the immigration management division of the An Giang police ran administrative checks on accommodation across Phu Quoc and found two Chinese nationals in an apartment without passports or visas.

The four in the villa asked the person renting it to help them move.

An acquaintance put them in touch with Dang, who housed them in an apartment in the Sonasea development and collected rent from them. Dang then arranged the taxi to the ferry.

Both men have admitted the offenses, police said. The investigation is ongoing.

Vietnamese police have reported a run of similar cases as crackdowns on scam compounds in Cambodia push operators across the border.

In June, police said they had dismantled a network that brought dozens of Chinese nationals into Vietnam in May and rotated them between resorts, farmstays and villas in Hanoi and northern provinces. The sites were fitted with computers, phones and bunk beds for a planned fraud center, and 16 of the group had entered illegally.

Hanoi police said in April they had recorded three cases involving 58 foreign nationals running online fraud and gambling operations in the capital between Dec. 15 and March 14. They asked residents who rent apartments to foreigners to report suspicious tenants.