Chairman of finance company Capel arrested for swindling investors

Trương, who allegedly ran a Ponzi scheme, was arrested Monday for the fraud.

He solicited deposits from hundreds of people promising very high interest rates, and appropriated over VND700 billion (US$28 million) of the money.

Investigators said he wanted money to buy a house and car and for personal expenses, and for this conned people of their money.

As chairman of Capel he recruited a number of employees and opened five branches in Hanoi, Can Tho and Bac Giang, Thanh Hoa and Nghe An provinces.

He organized many seminars to introduce Capel and its business and investments, and inviting participants to invest in them in return for extremely high interest, incentives and commissions.

To create trust, in classic Ponzi fashion, he ordered his staff to use the money collected from later investors to pay interest to earlier ones.

He then pressured employees, collaborators and investors to find more investors.

Investigators determined that in one year from April 2021, he signed nearly 8,000 business cooperation contracts worth more than VND700 billion and absconded with the money.

Some 300 people, mainly in the north, have filed complaints about being defrauded by Truong.