By nature, the timeshare model does not violate the law; it emerged in Switzerland in the 1960s and developed extremely strongly in the US in the 1970s with the purpose of sharing accommodation rights to save costs. However, when introduced to Vietnam, this model was sophisticatedly distorted by many organizations. Most notably, the target these organizations aim for is not savvy investors, but rather the demographic of retired customers of a "rare" advanced age, ranging from 70 to nearly 90 years old. This is a group that holds a lifetime of savings in their hands, yet carries a massive psychological void.
The real tragedy does not stem from the need to travel, but from the desire to fill an emotional emptiness while their children are absorbed in the daily grind, leaving their parents all alone in quiet apartments.
To successfully pull off these billion-dong schemes, scammers have constructed an extremely methodical psychological manipulation script, aiming directly at the fatal weakness of loneliness. Unlike ordinary salespeople, these individuals approach the elderly under the guise of filial children and grandchildren. They patiently visit the victims' homes weekly; typically, there was a case where a consultant visited an 86-year-old woman's house up to five times, enough to memorize every corner of the house, long enough to understand every rift in the family. This fake dedication is expressed through extremely ordinary actions but possesses tremendous psychological destructive power: they roll up their sleeves to cook in the kitchen, wash dishes, buy small gifts like a few apples or tangerines, and sweetly call the victim "mom" and refer to themselves as their "child."
Even after successfully coaxing the victim to pay, they are willing to deduct a portion of the money to give back as "lucky money" to the elderly, up to 20 million VND, to consolidate absolute trust. For elderly people burdened with illnesses, who have to stay awake all night until 4 AM Googling whether a blood sugar level of 4.5 is as dangerous as the 3.9 threshold without a single person by their side, the appearance of these consultants is like an emotional life preserver. For this very reason, the elderly are willing to empty their pockets to buy a timeshare contract, or even buy a five-seater car, not because they lack a destination, but because they desperately crave companionship.
Once trust is firmly established, massive financial traps are truly sprung through grandiose customer appreciation events and seminars prepared meticulously down to the last detail. Here, within a luxurious space and under the relentless pressure to close the contract, victims are overwhelmed by sky-high profit commitments and glamorous promotional images.
There was a case of an 86-year-old woman who blindly signed contracts worth up to 1 billion VND just because she saw that the resort project in Central Vietnam used the image of global football superstar Cristiano Ronaldo as bait.
More sophisticatedly, many victims have been dragged into the spiral of account upgrades, constantly being persuaded to pay more money to recoup previous losses, leading to the signing of dozens of contracts with a total damage value reaching tens of billions of VND.
The economic consequences left behind are extremely devastating as people nearing the end of their lives must mortgage their land use right certificates, pawn their pension books, the ultimate safety net of old age, and quietly borrow money everywhere. The pride of old age causes them to hide this from their children, struggling alone in a mud pit of debt until they are pushed into a dead end with no way out.
The rampant nature of these tricks largely stems from severe information asymmetry and massive gaps in the current legal system. Although timeshare transactions involve huge amounts of money collected in advance from customers and have commitment terms lasting decades, neither the Tourism Law nor the Real Estate Business Law in Vietnam currently has specialized regulations to govern them.
More seriously, the law does not have a mechanism to compel businesses selling timeshares to make deposits or secure bank guarantees. This fatal loophole has helped companies easily misappropriate capital and caused numerous difficulties for consumer protection efforts when disputes arise.
To move these cases from the framework of civil and commercial disputes to criminal prosecution for fraudulent appropriation of property, investigative agencies must prove that the element of deceit existed even before the time the customer handed over the money. Typical examples include having to clarify whether the business sold beyond the actual room capacity of the project or made transfer commitments knowing full well that the project was incomplete and entirely lacked the basis for implementation.
These painful cases are not merely a financial collapse, but also a profound wake-up call about the disconnect between generations in the context of modern society. The core of the tragedy lies not only in the billions of VND in damages, but also in the torment, in the irreparable rifts between parents and children after the truth is exposed. It reveals a cruel reality that the emotional void within the family is the firmest fulcrum for criminals to manipulate and profit from.
