Four detained over fake news of Samsung employee spreading HIV

Nguyen Hong Quan, Nguyen Duc Nam, Nguyen Van Son and Tran Van Tai, all 29, have been detained by the police of Pho Yen City for distributing pornographic materials. Two others, Nguyen Le Ha and Nguyen Ngoc Huyen, are being investigated for the same charge, but allowed on bail as they are raising small children.

Authorities said that Quan, a Samsung Thai Nguyen employee, on July 25 saw a Facebook post about a porn video of a Samsung female employee being leaked, which claimed that this woman had spread HIV to other people. Quan later went on Kakaotalk and accessed a group chat, where he saw the account of Dang The Duy, an employee in Quan’s department, posting a video of a man and a woman having sex, with a message saying “people said it’s C.T.D.”

That same night, Quan went to the company and accessed an account under the firm’s internal network. He then went on a Zalo group chat composed of his high school friends, where an account named Nguyen Duc Nam posted a video with the same content that Dang The Duy previously posted.

Quan then used his company’s internal account to find information about a woman named C.T.D. working at Samsung Thai Nguyen, before recording the information, phone number and portrait of the woman. Quan then shared the information on the Zalo group chat.

After about 10 minutes, Quan deleted the information, but it had already been shared further by other people in the group chat.

The other accused had shared many pornographic videos in the same Zalo group chat, investigation found.

Authorities said the female Samsung employee in question did not have HIV, according to a hospital report. She reported the matter to local police, and Samsung Thai Nguyen also asked the police to verify the rumors.

In July, a woman was fined VND7.5 million (US$300) for also spreading false and fabricated information on Facebook that a female Samsung Thai Nguyen employee spread HIV to multiple men.