Police of northern Vietnam’s Quang Tri Province have rescued a young man from a scamming group that promised him a job at a wood factory but took him to the so-called Golden Triangle bordering Thailand, Laos and Myanmar to send him to an exploiting casino or fraud company there.

The youth, 23-year-old Le Duc N., a resident of the province’s Trieu Phong District, was rescued in Laos and sent back to his family on Friday evening, after he managed to escape from his job scammers, Senior Lieutenant Colonel Do Duy Hai, head of the Security Investigation Department under the Quang Tri police department, said Saturday.

The rescue took place successfully with the assistance of Laotian police, Hai said. 

Earlier in September, N. was searching for a job via the Internet when he was promised by a person from a social media site to offer him a simple job with extremely high pay at a wood workshop in a Vietnam-Laos border area, the young man narrated. 

Knowing N. was falling into debt, that person even said he would provide N. with in-advance money to help him repay his debt.

Persuaded by such promises, N. agreed to take a trip led by a group of people to the Lao Bao border gate area in Quang Tri Province’s Huong Hoa District in late September.     

“Upon reaching Lao Bao, the group took me, along with some others, to cross the border to enter Laos via a trail. After that, everyone got in a car that ran for two days.”

N. said at that time he did not know where he was taken to, but after the border-crossing and from talks exchanged during the journey, he knew had been deceived by the group.

The young man later took advantage of the time when the car stopped at a motel to secretly use his phone to text his mother for help.

Le Duc N. (3rd, R) is seen being handed over by police in northern Vietnam’s Quang Tri Province to his family after he was rescued in Laos. Photo: Q. Nam / Tuoi Tre

Through the GPS on his phone, N. knew he was just a few hundreds of meters from the Golden Triangle area.

He could see many casinos located not far from his place, N. narrated.

As soon as receiving her son’s message, N.’s mother contacted Lieutenant Nguyen Thanh Luan, a relative of hers, who is working at Quang Tri’s Dong Ha City police, for support.

After hearing N.’s report online, Luan advised him to escape from the group as soon as possible, as the official believed that the swindlers would send N., as well as other victims of ‘high-paying easy job’ scam, to an exploitative casino or a fraud firm in the Golden Triangle region. 

Luan asked N. to seek help from local residents or any local government office he could find on the way to escape.  

N. later successfully absconded from the group when they were preparing for a meal. 

He ran for five minutes and rushed into a restaurant asking for help. Fortunately, there was a local police officer among the diners at the eatery and the officer took N. to the local police office for reporting his case.

Meanwhile, Luan had reported the job scam to the Quang Tri police department, which immediately sent a task force team to Laos to rescue N.   

After traveling nearly 1,500 kilometers, the team picked up N. at a motel where N. was staying under Laotian police’s arrangement.

“The Golden Triangle is a special region, so Lao police advised us to leave the area soon to avoid any potential danger,” said Captain Ngo Quang Tien, a member of the team.

“If N. were taken into this area already, then the rescue would become extremely difficult,” Senior Lieutenant Colonel Hai stated.

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