Men arrested for selling girls to karaoke bar

Le Minh Cong, 26, Hoang Van Toan, 21 and Hoang Van Khiem, 17, are now facing the charge of human trafficking. All of them are natives of Hai Duong Province, 75 km east of Hanoi.

According to the police, Cong got connected with a 17-year-old girl who was working at a karaoke bar in Hanoi.

He then asked her to visit his home in Hai Duong. She agreed.

On August 13, the girl and her cousin, a 15-year-old girl, grabbed a taxi cab to travel from Hanoi to Hai Duong.

Cong and Khiem picked them up and brought them to a hotel in Quang Ninh Province that borders Hai Duong.

After that, Cong kept them hostage, seized their mobile phones, and threatened them with weapons.

He then forced the two girls to talk on the phone with a stranger.

As demanded by Cong, the two girls must tell that stranger they were over 18 and in debt.

Around 10 p.m. on August 13, Cong and Toan took the two girls to meet a person for the purpose of selling the girls but as the price was too low, they turned down the deal.

Later, they found a new customer, the owner of a karaoke bar in Tam Dao Town of Vinh Phuc Province.

He agreed to buy the girls at VND33 million (US$1,350) and as agreed with Cong, he will recover the capital by gradually deducting the girls' monthly salaries.

Later, he found that one of the girls he had bought was under 18 so he reached out to her family to return her.

The girls' families reported Cong and his accomplices.

Cases of girls being tricked and sold to karaoke and massage parlors are not rare in Vietnam. In most cases, the girls came from poor families and dropped out of school early, and were lured by recruitment information on social media promising them high salaries put out by human traffickers.