Vietnamese authorities are detaining six Taiwanese suspects in connection with a scam that yielded them nearly US$300,000, police in the central province of Quang Nam said on Tuesday.

The foreigners were Chung Shao Teng, Chang Seng Ping, Chang Chia Pin, Bian Zong Xun, Chang Fu Lung and Lo Yu Hsuan.

Six Vietnamese are also being held for their involvement in the racketeering.

The Taiwanese and Vietnamese nationals were accused of defrauding to illegally appropriate property and failing to report the crime to authorities, the police said without elaborating how the charges were divided amongst the captured.

In early June, a woman in Quang Nam known as H.T.P. told the local police that she had been deceived by a group of men into giving them over VND1.9 billion ($84,000), according to the case file.

The woman received a phone call from a man who at the time identified himself as Hai, claiming to be a Ho Chi Minh City-based official of the General Department of Public Security, a section of the Ministry of Public Security.

Having told P. the exact number and issue date of her ID card, Hai said her two bank accounts were implicated in an international drugs trafficking ring under investigation.

He demanded her to disclose the probe to no one else and transfer all her bank savings, more than VND1.9 billion ($84,000), to a person named D.V.Q. in Ho Chi Minh City for safekeeping since her account information had been stolen.

She did just what was asked by Hai, who subsequently also required her to burn all documents related in the transaction.

The twelve suspects were arrested following the cooperation between the police in Quang Nam and the southern metropolis.

The putative fraudsters sought for personal information of Vietnamese people on the Internet, and made telephone calls by a communication service known as Voice over Internet Protocol, according to police records.

Their major trick was pretending to be officials from law enforcement agencies who are dealing with criminal cases so that they can dupe the victim into sending bank savings to them.

Between early May and mid-June, multiple Vietnamese people fell prey to the above the scam of the group, who received nearly VND7 billion ($308,000) from the scheme, police added.

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