A rising number of Internet users in Vietnam have participated in trading counterfeit money without knowing they could be subject to a penalty as severe as life imprisonment.

Several pages on social media have been created to support the online sale of fake cash. Both sellers and buyers could be charged for multiple violations of Vietnamese law.

One of such pages was a Facebook account named L.T.T., whose owner stated that buyers just needed to text the serial number of a prepaid phone card of any local mobile operator to purchase his counterfeit money.

A probe by Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper later showed that the account had been activated for three months, carrying posts about the sale service.

T. said that the trade would be performed at the ratio of VND1 million (US$44.34) in real bills to VND5 million ($221.6) in fake cash, with denominations ranging from VND50,000 ($2.2) to VND500,000 ($22.2).

The operator of a similar page said that his fake currency was made in China, while another Facebook account named M.L.N. asserted that his product was of high quality and he often ran out of stock.

Most of the sites guaranteed their counterfeit cash is 97 percent similar to real banknotes, requiring customers to pay an upfront fee of 20 to 50 percent of the entire payment in the form of bank transactions or prepaid mobile cards.

The requested cash will be delivered in person or by post.

Many buyers have also fallen victim to con artists who vanished after receiving their upfront payment.

All sides will be punished

According to Truong Xuan Tam, a Vietnamese lawyer, the law has indicated that those individuals engaging in the trade of bogus money, in any form and whether or not the transaction is successful, would be criminally charged.

Both buyers and sellers will be charged with storing and circulating counterfeit money under the Penal Code, Tam elaborated.

Violators of the code shall be sentenced to three to seven years in prison if the fake cash is worth under VND3 million ($133), and between five and 12 years if the value is from VND3 million to VND50 million ($2,216), said Phan Anh Tuan, a senior lecturer at the Ho Chi Minh City University of Law.

If the illegal currency is worth VND50 million and over, offenders will be jailed for 10 to 20 years or for life, Tuan continued.

Those Facebook users who create their pages to trick customers and steal their upfront payment will be charged with fraud and property appropriation, the expert added.

Victims of such cases will still be convicted of circulating counterfeit money.

The investigation of fake money trade requires the efforts of several competent agencies as sellers’ identities are hard to figure out due to the existence of too many clone Facebook accounts.

Evidence of the transaction can be easily erased as payment and shipment are done via the trade of phone cards and express delivery, Tam said.

To rectify the situation, everyone must be more aware of the violation and its respective penalties, the lawyer stated, adding that operators of social media sites in Vietnam should closely monitor their users’ activities to take timely action.

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