Three men originally from Africa have been taken into police custody as they are accused of deceiving a Vietnamese woman into giving them more than US$43,000, officers said on Monday.

The suspects are Monthe De Fouda Martial, a 29-year-old citizen of the Central African country of Cameroon; Ifeanyi Matthew Anthony, 28, from Nigeria; and Nguyen Hang Tcheuko Minh, 35, a naturalized Vietnamese of Cameroonian origin.

The last one is a retired footballer who used to play in the V-League – Vietnam’s national football club competition.

In February, Anthony invited Minh to join his racketeering by pretending to be a staff member of an international shipping company and making contact with a 42-year-old Vietnamese woman named T. in the southern city of Can Tho, located in the Mekong Delta region.

Anthony obtained information of the woman earlier from a fellow countryman involved in a fraud ring.

Minh called T. via the phone, requiring her to pay US$1,600 in customs duty for a package from the United States showing her as the recipient. She agreed.

She did the same with $3,500 in additional customs duty after the man said the authorities found a large number of foreign notes in the parcel.

She continued to transfer $10,500 to Minh so that he would in turn hand it to customs officers, as he claimed that the parcel was filled with $1.4 million worth of bills, and accompanied by no legal documents proving its origin.

On March 29, Martial brought a suitcase containing bundles of cash-like pieces of paper to the rendezvous with T. at a hotel in District 7, Ho Chi Minh City.

Martial poured liquid on some pieces he extracted from a pile, which then turned into 100-dollar notes.

He required the woman to pay $100,000 to purchase a sufficient amount of this type of liquid, which he claimed she could deploy for the transformation of all the bundles.

Bundles of cash used in the cheating. Photo courtesy of police in Can Tho City, Vietnam

She gave him only $25,000 due to a lack of available money, and returned to her hometown, Can Tho.

Martial threatened to ship the suitcase back to the U.S. if she failed to transfer him more money.

Suspecting fraud, she reported the case to police, who caught Martial when he was waiting for her at a designated place.

Martial, Minh and Anthony admitted wrongdoing.

T. told police that the men had defrauded her of over $43,000.

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