Police in Thai Nguyen Province, northern Vietnam have prosecuted six locals, all aged 29, for sharing two pornographic videos that falsely claimed a worker at a Samsung-owned company in the province had "transmitted HIV to 16 male co-workers."

The police department in the province’s Pho Yen City announced on Saturday that they had charged four men and two women with "distribution of pornographic materials" in accordance with Vietnamese Penal Code.

The charges have been approved by the municipal People’s Procuracy.

The men are currently in detention, while the women, who are nursing babies under 36 months old, have been released on bail but are restricted from leaving their places residence.

The victim, identified as C.T.D., is an employee at Samsung Electronics Vietnam Thai Nguyen Company Limited (SEVT) in Yen Binh Industrial Park, Pho Yen.

Contrary to the false claims, D. is not the woman in the videos, and she does not have HIV.

Her name and personal information were illegally used in the false information attached to the clips.

On July 25, 2024, one of the arrested men, Nguyen Hong Q., who also works at SEVT, viewed the pornographic clips in Facebook and Zalo groups.

The clips falsely identified the woman as D. and claimed she had infected 16 male co-workers with HIV at SEVT.

Q. then accessed the company’s employee database, obtained D.'s personal details, including her photo and phone number, and shared them along with the videos in the Zalo group "Giao An."

Although Q. deleted his post about ten minutes later, it had already gone viral on Zalo, a Vietnamese chat app, and other social media platforms.

Following the video's circulation, a representative of SEVT issued a statement to the provincial Department of Health, confirming that the woman in the videos is not an employee of the company.

The statement also clarified that none of the men alleged to have been infected with HIV were company workers.

SEVT requested a police investigation to protect the company's image and the well-being of its staff.

D. also asked police officers to investigate to defend her and her family's honor.

Yen Binh General Hospital in Pho Yen has confirmed that D. does not have HIV, as verified by recent medical tests.

The city's police are continuing their investigation to trace the origin of the videos and the false information.

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