New Arrest Made In Infamous Vietnam Psychic Scam
A new suspect in the notorious psychic scam case that is taking place in central Vietnam has been arrested by police. The case involves a supposed ‘psychic’ who allegedly swindled large amounts of money from a sponsoring bank by faking the remains of those who died in war.
Nguyen Thanh Thuy is the self-proclaimed psychic who is at the center of the scam and his son-in-law Nguyen Truong Son is the latest suspect to be arrested for his part in the scam.
56-year-old Thuy was a police officer but was then jailed for fraud and had to leave the force. In October of 2013 he and his wife were taken into custody for their latest scam involving the war veterans.
His brother and brother-in-law were later arrested as well.
According to investigators, Thuy and his family unearthed nine corpses and declared that they were the bodies of war soldiers that had been missing.
The Military Forensic Institute later concluded that most of the remains were actually cat and pig bones.
Quang Tri Province police state that by the time they were caught and arrested, the family had excavated almost 100 sets of remains from different places in the central region to the south.
Reportedly, the excavations were paid for by the Vietnam Bank for Social Policies, which is state-owned. They would pay Thuy about $3,400 for each corpse he found.
National broadcaster Vietnam Television ran a special and revealed common tricks that fake psychics use to swindle money out of families of missing soldiers and Thuy’s case was soon flagged as a major scam after the airing.
It is estimated that the number of soldiers who have been unaccounted for or unidentified in Vietnam is about 500,000.
Even though there has been a lot of controversy over the reliability of those proclaiming they have telepathic powers in Vietnam and warnings have been making headlines for years in an effort to keep residents from falling into these traps, families in all areas of the country continue to use psychics and mediums in an effort to find their missing loved ones and the number of psychic scams is a real problem.
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