Dealership owners arrested in certificate scam for selling 4,000 stolen motorbikes as new

Nguyen Sy Toan, 43, Nguyen Thi Kieu Oanh, 47, and Nguyen Dinh Sung, 38, sold them to Bui Van Tan, 40, head of a stolen motorbike trafficking gang, who was arrested late last year.

Toan owns a motorbike export business in Hoc Mon District, while Oanh and Sung run dealerships that also supply vehicles to him.

Quality inspection certificates are issued by manufacturing facilities to prove that a motorbike is brand new and has passed quality inspection before being shipped, but they are not required for exports or handed over to buyers.

So Toan, Oanh and Sung kept the certificates and sold them to Tan who modified stolen motorbikes’ vehicle identification numbers to match those on the certificates, effectively passing them off as new vehicles.

The police have seized over 30,000 of the certificates and discovered that Tan’s gang had managed to sell nearly 4,000 stolen vehicles.

The investigation began at the end of 2023 and resulted in the arrest of Tan and eight others.

The police said the trafficking ring used new and sophisticated methods to use several legal businesses as a front for their crimes.