11 women tricked, sold to Chinese men as wives

The police are set to charge Luong Thi Hai, 31, Pham Thi Tu, 61, and four others with trafficking people, trafficking people under 16, brokering illegal entry, and extortion.

The victims included girls under 16 and mentally ill people, authorities said.

In 2015 Hai traveled to China as a worker, got married and stayed back.

Realizing many Chinese men wanted Vietnamese wives, she decided to trick women and sell them there.

In 2018 she knew Tu and Huynh Mong Linh, 45, through a group that brokered marriages between Vietnamese women and foreign men online.

Together, they searched for women in difficult circumstances, with low literacy or who were divorced in the Mekong Delta and nearby regions to lure them to China.

They would persuade victims to take pictures of themselves and their personal IDs and pass them on to people at the border, who would take them to China through less traveled paths in Lang Son and Cao Bang provinces for VND40 million (US$1,660). Tu would fly the victims to Hanoi from Can Tho or HCMC and take them to the border.

Once in China, they would be taken to a hotel in Henan Province, where they would be kept under watch by Hai before being sold to local men.

Those who resist would be threatened and beaten by Hai's henchmen.

Chinese men would pay her VND200-400 million for a wife.

She would send VND140-160 million to Tu in Vietnam, and each would net VND80-100 million after expenses.

Tu would give the victims' families VND20-100 million.

After getting married, many victims would be abused and beaten by their husbands. If they wanted to return to Vietnam, the ring would force their family to return all the money they received and some on top to transport the victims back.

Authorities said that between 2019 and 2022 the ring had earned around VND1 billion.