Police in southern Vietnam have advised that people be more cautious during the 2018 FIFA World Cup, as punters losing bets on the football competition are more likely to turn to crime.

For instance, police in Tien Giang Province said on Thursday they have arrested a man on charges of swindling personal assets, after he attempted to cheat a local resident to have money to repay debts accumulated after making multiple failures on World Cup bets.

The arrestee, 48-year-old Nguyen Van Hau, had offered to sell a resident in Tien Giang what he claimed to be 200 packs of foreign cigarettes for VND30.5 million ($1,342), according to police records.

The two met at around 11:00 am on Wednesday, with the buyer paying Hau in cash without even checking the products.

It was not until Hau had already fled did the buyer open the packets, only to find noodles, instead of foreign cigarettes, inside.

Hau was held down in a civil arrest and turned in to the local police.

Officers said the man had run up debts of VND40-50 million ($1,760-2,200) after losing multiple World Cup bets.

Hau confessed he had successfully defrauded a victim prior to his arrest.

The trick was to disguise as a driver and knock on the doors of grocery stores, offering to sell the owners smuggled cigarettes at attractive prices before actually delivering boxes that contained only low-end products.

Also on Thursday, police in Dong Nai Province said they had nabbed a man who entered a local hospital to steal possessions of a patient’s relative.

Tran Dinh Dong managed to stealthily take a mobile phone and over VND4 million ($176) from a person tending a sick relative at the Dong Nai general hospital at around 3:00 am on Wednesday, according to the police.

Dong was caught by a security guard of the infirmary when attempting another theft in a different room.

Dong’s motivation was the same as Hau’s – huge debts from football sportsbooks.

Surprisingly, he succeeded in stealing others’ possessions more than ten times previously, the police said.

These cases followed the effort by a homeless man to steal an ambulance on Sunday to pay off debts from World Cup betting.

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