31 arrested in debt collection ring

The companies, all based in Ho Chi Minh City's District 11, bought more than 330,000 lending contracts worth thousands of billions of dong of bad debts from financial companies and other credit institutions.

They paid a price worth 12-15% of the debts and had managed to recover around VND500 billion (US$21 million) between July 2018 and the end of last year, according to the investigation between Hanoi police and officers from the Ministry of Public Security.

They employed more than 100 people to make phone calls threatening the debtors. Each employee had to collect at least VND300 million of debt money each month, and would be fired if they failed to do so for two consecutive months.

Investigation found the group also called to threaten the debtors' family members and colleagues. They made fake pornographic images of these people and posted them on social media to exert pressure on the debtors.