Vietnamese-American arrested over $706,000 fraud accusations

By Chau Thanh February 20, 2025 | 11:58 pm PT

Joshua Dung-Huu at a police station in southern Vietnam, Feb. 20, 2025. Photo by VnExpress/Chau Thanh

A U.S. citizen of Vietnamese origin was arrested after swindling over VND18 billion ($706,159) from victims with false promises of "rescuing fishing vessels seized abroad."

Joshua Dung-Huu, who currently resides in Ho Chi Minh City, was arrested by police on Thursday for obtaining property by fraud.

He allegedly opened several companies in HCMC and other southern localities under the names of different people. He, however, operates the companies.

In October 2020, three people, who had nine fishing vessels seized by Indonesian authorities, came to Joshua for help. Joshua told them that he was doing business in Indonesia and knew several officials in the country, so he would help "rescue" the fishing vessels for VND1 billion each.

The victims pooled together the money and sent it to Joshua multiple times, totaling to over VND9.4 billion. However, their vessels were never returned.

In the 2019-2020 period, Joshua also tricked a HCMC company by lying that he could connect it to a company in Singapore that wanted to sell gasoline, and successfully swindled over VND6.8 billion from them. He also tricked a woman in HCMC by borrowing her money for business, stealing VND2 billion from her.

An investigation is ongoing.