Vietnamese tech tycoon 'Shark Binh' charged with fraud

The announcement was made during a press briefing held by the Hanoi Department of Public Security on Tuesday.

The event centered on several major economic and environmental criminal cases currently under investigation.

Among them was a case related to violations that occurred at NextTech Group JSC, located on Tam Trinh Street in Tuong Mai Ward, Hanoi.

Binh, 44, is the chairman of NextTech Group.

In addition to NextTech Group, some affiliated companies are under investigation.

On Tuesday night last week, several officers searched the headquarters of NextTech.

Witnesses reported that police, both in uniform and plainclothes, oversaw the removal of numerous sealed cardboard boxes from the upper floors of the building.

The materials were later loaded into trucks and taken away for examination.

The investigation centers around a failed cryptocurrency project named AntEx, promoted by Shark Binh in 2021.

Colonel Nguyen Duc Long, deputy director of the Hanoi department, said that authorities had received multiple reports concerning alleged investment fraud related to the blockchain project.

In 2021, Binh announced a US$2.5 million investment in AntEx and served as a strategic advisor.

The project was introduced as a decentralized finance ecosystem, with ambitions to develop the Vietnamese stablecoin VNDT, drawing significant interest from domestic investors, even though crypto assets were not yet legally recognized in Vietnam at the time.

However, AntEx’s token quickly plummeted by 99 percent in value, leading to the project's official website and social media channels being shut down.

Between August and November 2021, Binh’s team issued and sold some 33.2 billion Antex tokens to around 30,000 investors via various cryptocurrency exchanges, earning a total of 4.5 million USDT, a digital currency equivalent to about $4.5 million.

According to police, from November to December 2021, he leveraged his personal reputation and public influence to promote the launch of the Next100 Blockchain Investment Fund on social media.

The fund was presented as a $50 million initiative to invest in cryptocurrency projects over a 10-year period.

The move was designed to boost investor confidence in Antex, promote the token, and prevent mass sell-offs that could lead to a collapse in its value.

Despite the project failing to follow its roadmap, Binh and other NextTech shareholders allegedly agreed to withdraw funds from the project's central wallet, transfer them to personal crypto wallets, and then sell and convert the assets into Vietnamese dong for personal gain.

Investigators also alleged that funds were funneled into companies within the NextTech ecosystem, where they were used for purposes unrelated to the project, directly involving investor money.

Police have determined that Binh and the founding shareholders misappropriated a particularly large amount of money by siphoning funds from over 30,000 investor wallets.

In March 2023, AntEx rebranded as Rabbit (RAB), but the new token also lost roughly 95 percent of its value from its peak.

Authorities have since received formal complaints from investors, including a case in Ninh Binh Province where an individual claimed to have lost $2,000.

Violations related to accounting

The probe further revealed that in 2022, Binh directed the establishment of NextLand Real Estate JSC and appointed associates to leadership roles.

According to police, he instructed staff to operate dual accounting systems, deliberately underreporting revenue and profit.

This was allegedly done by their lowering the sales price in contracts with customers, while actual sales figures were kept in separate internal records.

These actions caused substantial financial losses to the state budget.

Seizure of assets worth $34 million

To date, the investigation agency has frozen and seized assets worth some VND900 billion ($34 million), including 597 taels of gold, U.S. dollars, 18 land use rights certificates, two cars, and numerous financial documents, accounting records, and electronic devices.

A portion of the damage, nearly VND3.45 billion ($130,860), has been voluntarily reimbursed by the accused parties.

Police are continuing to expand the probe to clarify violations involving member companies within the NextTech Group ecosystem.