Alibaba Fraud Not Unique

By Joe Fotalattee

Alibaba Fraud Not Unique

Over 4,000 people lost money and accrued debt by investing in projects run by Ho Chi Minh City-based real estate developer Alibaba. These pie-in-the-sky development opportunities turned out to exist only on paper.

At the hearing on Monday, 300 victims attended and some testified to the false promises made and illegal land deals. It was one of several sessions that the Ho Chi Minh City People’s Court will hold until January to hear from the more than 4,000 victims of Alibaba, according to a report by VNExpress.

Nguyen Thai Luyen founded the HCMC-based business in 2016 and also formed 22 subsidiaries to invest in 58 projects in the provinces of Dong Nai, Ba Ria-Vung Tau, and Binh Thuan. The projects were all falsely advertised to customers and illegally laid out on agricultural land.

Investigators were able to get in touch with 4,065 of the customers who had invested VND2.1 trillion after Luyen instructed his staff to illegally collect nearly VND2.4 trillion from 4,560 clients.

Why This Case Is Important To The Beat Community:

As foreigners are not legally allowed to purchase land, many of those cases go unreported to authorities. Common tactics by fraudsters include selling a single plot to multiple investors and delaying red books or returns by using false promises of new roads, bridges, and infrastructure to lure more money out of unscrupulous investors.

Other tactics include agents returning the original investment after years of collecting interest or turning profits on a separate legitimate transaction. The agent will claim government problems with the investor’s particular land deal, and the buyer is often satisfied with recouping a fraction of the original amount.

Foreigners are also hesitant to report cases closer to home, involving friends or family members’ land they will inevitably never set foot on. Another pie-in-the-sky, but at least it isn’t a cryptocurrency.

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