The Details of the Uscrupulous Scams of Central Saigons “Golden Triangle”
THIS COULD SAVE YOU MANY HUNDREDS OF DOLLARS IF YOU INTEND TO SPEND TIME IN VIETNAM BARS!
To be fair, – the truth is pretty much everywhere in Asia if you let your guard down in these sort of places, you’ll get cheated a bit for certain. A ‘bit’…and sure, in some places a tad more than a ‘bit.’ The sheer extent of it however, now occurring in the “Golden Triangle“ of Saigon is beyond a ‘bit’ of cheating. It’s downright criminal, involves significant Dollars $$$ – and is often seriously dangerous.
COMING SOON – In Part 4 – we will explore exactly how endemic cultural corruption has contributed to WHY nothing has been done to date about the growing problem in the area.
For this episode of the Saga, however, we’ll look at the nuts and bolts and gritty tactics of the shadiest bars in the central Saigon “Golden Triangle” (as defined in Part 2.)
The Dirty Dozen – Top12 Unscrupulous Scams of Central Saigon Bars
.
1. Fiddle the Four Squares Bill – An Oldie but a Goodie!
As explained in the photos above, this is the backbone to the BS tried and tested billing system of most bars in the area. One pen line for 1 drink/ bottle/ whatever. It’s designed for scamming. One new, honest foreign owner in a nearby bar – tried to incorporate a modern “IPOS” – electronic point of sale system – where the exact time of order and staff ID of who ordered is easily seen at checkout. Mutiny! The staff were appalled! – How could they make their BS “Tips” with such a system! 😂. He finally managed to employ it – but only with all fresh brand new staff. Unfortunately, COVID came along and that bar closed down. It’s replacement uses the good old Four Square Billing system…
2. Seriously FAKE alcohol
Everyone knows that all through Asia fake – pretty much everything – is available at a fraction of the price of the real McCoy. It’s an obsession to be seen sporting the latest “Chanel” handbag or belt – but who are they really kidding? Harmless – except maybe to the billion-dollar corporations…
Unfortunately, fake alcohol is not only commonplace, it’s actually virtually impossible to stop its distribution in places like Vietnam. Sadly a lot of it is also badly made – it often tastes kind of Ok.. – but it is riddled with seriously unhealthy solvents that in isolated instances have led to – in the worst cases – giving up the grog for your life!
Fake alcohol is everywhere in Saigon. Its difficult to tell from the bottles. The seedy joints buy the cheapest most dangerous stuff with no regard for the consequences…
The seediest joints in the Triangle are after every penny of profit – and go out of their way to get the cheapest fake stuff out there. Top Shelf. It’s riddled with poison even before they doctor it! For the price of two drinks, you could buy two liter bottles of this finest. Best case is even after just a few, most likely the head will be the only part of you in the throes of death.
Apart from the obvious ( go elsewhere!) – the only real way around it is to just drink beer from unopened bottles, or even bring your own bottle of spirits from another country and pay the minimal “corkage” fee. They’re after you staying there, and buying drinks for/ consuming with the lovely “ladies” – hoping you will at least get a little tipsy so they can ultimately cheat you. That’s where they make their real money after all…
.
.
This is an advertisement. US customers only.
International (Australia/NZ/UK/CA) customers click HERE
.
3. Ring The Bell – (Most Expensive Coke in Northern Hemisphere!)
Great idea when it first started, the “ Ring the Bell Party Starter” – a bell mounted above the bar was a total hit with every new reveler to the scene. If the Chime sounded all the staff would raucously cheer with delight, then get ready to down tools and down a shot in unison – led by the generous punter. It worked. Each ding cost a fortune, sure, but after a couple of chimes the young staff were tipsy, and the party really started!!
Music pumped, dancing on the bar, worth the bucks for a genuinely good time right?…well it was yes… until the greedy new style owners took over the area and morphed it into just another scam.
Nowadays the slippery bartender will ALWAYS make the first in line a real shot (well -fake probably but it will have some sort of poison in it) and the rest will be 90-100% sweet soda.😊 Looks the deal, just lacks the punch – outright fraud any way you swallow it. Each “Ding” costs the same at over $10USD/pop per shot, and with an average of a dozen staff plus the sucker punter, thats around 120 USD PURE PROFIT for the “lucky” bar per chime!..
4. Ring The Bell – ( With The Phantom Staff )
Our featured owners’ favourite, the old “Rush next door’s staff in to celebrate” trick! The soon-to-be-poor punter rings the bell, and Lo and Behold, all of a sudden he is shouting 24 staff instead of 12! Bonus! Now he pays $240USD for a dollars worth of soda drinks!🤣👍
5. “Lady Drinks” – Recipe for Ripoff…
Probably the biggest source of fraudulent income for any bar in the Triangle is the Lady Drink Sham.
The idea is that the customer is paying for the company of a girl to sit and talk and listen to his story/ woes so then …- fair enough right? The problem is the shady bars just go to town adding sometimes – a half century more phantom drinks – to the punter’s bill after they get him drunk/ high on balloons/ or simply drug him. The “cocktails” cost around 160 – 200,000 VND so around ~ $8-10 USD/ drink, which adds up super fast when an unwitting lad finds out later he has apparently been buying 5 or 6 girls rounds with each drink he has.
To make it worse, the drinks are usually advertised as alcoholic cocktails. More fun if the lass is getting tipsy while listening to your captive banter right? Invariably however, they end up as pure soft drink, or perhaps a tiny bit of the spirit wiped around the top of the glass so that if the punter tries it the taste kind-of matches.
The girls get a commission on every drink ( 40-60,000VND ~$2 to $3USD) so good luck arguing with the half dozen or more who vehemently testify that you indeed DID invite them to drink with you while you were sleepwalking. The good old “Fiddle the 4 Squares Bill” system facilitates the scam easily – no record of when or who ordered just a plethora of pen strokes proving you must OWE $$!!
6. Irresponsible Service Of Alcohol – Deliberately SERIOUSLY Irresponsible!
It may humor those who have regularly attended the odd bar in Vietnam that in actual fact, Responsible Service of Alcohol is indeed mandated by law! 😳
It is totally ignored however in all the seedy bars of Saigon, – two blind eyes turned. This might not sound so bad, indeed Western countries can be a pain in the arse for those who just want to let loose every now and then. Problem is – a truckload of whisky in the system – even without the drugging – means that credit card – and all the other fraud these places use becomes extremely easy. You can guess how keen the owners are to get you plastered!
(Actually alcohol is also the second most common named “drug” associated with “Date Rape” in the world – there are excellent reasons for regulatory restrictions to stop vendors deliberately getting any punter totalled!)
Pleasingly – in most parts of Vietnam a small bar owner will usually look after his regulars, let him overindulge to a point, but always genuinely attempt to take care of the dude.
Having said that, you are totally DREAMING if you think any bar in the Golden Triangle has anything but your wallet’s insides dear to their heart!
Irresponsible service of alcohol is probably the biggest contributor to facilitating items 1 to 12 of the steal-your-cash scams.
Never mind any promises they may have made prior about “Don’t worry we will take care of you!” – If you are still breathing (upright is ignored), the owners will literally push booze down your throat at every opportunity! The slurrier the better! – Can’t speak? Perfect!! Easy target..
A little Drunk? Ringing this bell will make you feel better! Come on Daaarling ring it!
Not a big fan of the “Running Tab” – one punter recalls that on two occasions he attempted to make a “deal” with an owner [We will call her Miss “?”] (who professed to be a great friend!
.) If his bill reached 2 million VND ($100) – it was obviously now time to go home and no more orders were to be made. He stipulated that the only way to continue was a signed written statement at the time be made at that point by him, which he could then see afterward with the bill, to confirm he was in fact in control and not drunk to the point of diminished capacity. Miss “?” enthusiastically agreed wholeheartedly – she was a good friend after all! “Don’t you worry!!.”
Result: 22 million VND (950USD) charged to his card and ZERO recollection of anything after the first 4 beers! 
Furious – and confused – (maybe he was overtired and that caused the weird blackout?) – he confronted her – “Noo – you were fine! – You said don’t worry about the deal so I didn’t” – was the excuse. Foolishly, because Miss”?” was a friend after all, and at the time he was unaware of the extent of the scamming, the punter actually tried it again several months later – with a thorough ten-minute briefing prior to stipulating the NO EXCEPTIONS policy… You can guess the result. 
$$$ THOUSANDS! Needless to say, the punter now knows how he lost his memory, and Miss “?” is no longer on his Christmas card list…
7. Just Pour It Down The Sink! (Or Throw It Up In The Toilet!)
In most Triangle bars the girls are paid a commission not only for the Lady Drinks as mentioned before, but also if they help a punter drink a bottle of spirits ( usually fake) that he has bought in the bar. For a 1,800,000VND [80USD] bottle ( which costs about 150,000 VND [6.50 USD] at the fake grog shop), the girls will get around 300,000 VND [13USD] between them once it is finished.
No prizes for guessing they try to finish as quickly as possible, hoping for more and to get the punter as loose as possible to open up the other scam opportunities.
Quickest way about this is to simply pour the crap down the sink when old mate has a pit stop or isn’t looking. If it doesn’t go down the sink, it will most likely go down the toilet shortly after anyway when they force themselves to vomit. Of course it costs a lot more with all the mixers thrown out too.. This happens EVERYWHERE – with lady drinks as well as customer’s expensive purchases. Ching Ching! $😁
Ironically – some owners actually argue with punters who see this (and /or the similar Lady Drink scams) and complain about the rip off.
“But its not fair on my staff! They might get drunk – its hard on them!”
Sounds like a sustainable business model issue to me!
8. Fill Him Up With Funky Balloons! (NO2 Gas)
Balloons have taken off recently all over Vietnam, with the authorities now trying to reel in the monster it has created. Technically it’s not illegal to use them, but their commercial sale and distribution in fact is. Go Figure? So how can you legally get them then? Pay some money and you’ll get a license to have them on your premises.
The Balloons are NO2 – Nitrous Oxide – or “Happy Gas” – the very same laughing gas a Dentist uses to ease the pain. Peoples reaction to them vary – generally, one or two just makes someone happy, while others become intoxicated akin to getting super drunk super quick.
Heart attacks, seizures, and other drastic side effects are possible with excessive use.
A responsible bar owner would surely protect her clients and not allow excessive use to prevent such a tragedy. Surely they want the customer to be able to come back someday? Yeah Right…🤣
They’re also SUPER addictive – there’s a reason they’re illegal in most parts of the world.
At 160-180, 000VND /pop ( $8 bucks) the Scammers totally Loooooove them! They’ll even offer free – or much cheaper by the bottle – to “Special” (drunk) customers, and especially those with any track record of being unable to handle them. (No, they’re NOT your “friend!”)
Another side effect is short-term memory loss – and what a bonus THAT is for the Fraudsters! Open slather. After about 3 to 4 or so – AWESOME!! – they’ve got you! – The short-term memory is a bit fuzzy so now the bill is changed – with the old pen strokes – to reflect 5 more phantom girls were not only drinking but doing balloons with you too!! Ching! Ching! $😁
Balloons are a perfect introduction to a series of MAJOR FRAUD plays. The average Joe will find his bill inflated with a bunch of Lady Drinks, more balloons etc that no doubt he never had, but unless he has resources the scammers can tap into he will be left alone after that. ( Just a few hundred dollars loss👍.) If he has a credit card however…and is KNOWN to have some $$, then all bets are off.
9. Credit Card Pin And Numbers/ CVV Theft – They’re Watching EVERYTHING!!
If a “High Roller” shows up at a bar in the Golden Triangle, within minutes the owner will most likely miraculously just “happen” to show up too. Sure – phone messages play a role, but make no mistake – there are cameras EVERYWHERE throughout these bars, live feed and recorded, and nothing of “Interest” goes unnoticed!
When a bill is paid with a card, the girls are trained to watch – and if they miss the pin number being entered, the cameras most likely won’t! Modern technology enables zoom in on many feeds, and with a customer tipsy, high on Nitrous, wasted on some other substance he may or may not have any idea about, the chances are about 110% that his card pin will be compromised. Cameras (on phones too) easily photo the card and CVV numbers too, and if not that night, a few nights or weeks later a couple of thousand dollars worth of electrical equipment may suddenly appear purchased online in New York! It’s a worldwide scam. Card details are easily sold, goods bought elsewhere, then resold on eBay “New never used in the box” for 10-20% less.
Of course without even going to that extent, the easiest – and most common fraud to administer – is to just keep adding BS bills to the tab, and pay with the card while the punter is sleepwalking – or just passed out on the lounge.
*See the updated section Enrichlove.co:* Click Below:
The Saigon Bar Scene Part 2 (*Updated*) – The Beginning Of The Seedy End.
Despite numerous reports of obvious fraud nothing seems to ever happen to these places. That was one of the prime motivations for these posts. In Part 4 we will explore the deep seeded reasons why meaningful prosecution is so difficult in these places – to pursue…
10. Drink Spiking.
By now you should have got the idea that really, there is enough unscrupulous shit going down around the Golden Triangle to not even bother with the drink spiking in most instances. The super scammy bars however, greedily cannot resist every chance to fleece – especially a perceived wealthy punter, from of big bucket of his hard-earned cash. See the section in Part 2 for more details, but most likely a mix of MDMA and Ketamine are used.
This tardy combo has varying effects, but the most common are stimulation, total compliance, and severe memory loss for 12 – 24 hours even. Importantly it usually doesn’t render the mark totally dysfunctional, so they can keep milking him over and over…
Combine the odd regular small dose with the nitrous and alcohol – and you can keep the mark going all night and most of next day, then walk the susceptible sucker to an ATM and get him to slurrily joke while he happily clears out the rest of his account for you. Awesome!!!
Stimulation, total compliance, and severe memory loss for 12-24hrs…Anything they want, they get it!
It’s virtually impossible to stop this low-life tactic if you are in the least bit relaxed. (No point in being in a bar at all if that’s not the case!) Drinking from unopened bottles and watching like a hawk is a start but won’t be enough if they’re motivated. It only takes a small sprinkle of the substance to have the desired effect, and reports of pre-laced lime cuts, and even pre-doctored spirits bottles have been made.
The good news is if you have a strange blackout, are missing the odd thousand or two from your card, feel it may have happened – and accuse the bar owner, they will most certainly have a video of your “Party.” For the big swindles, they try to set the punter up when he’s sleepwalking. They use it to blackmail and will show everyone on Facebook/ social media and even the police, how you were not only partying but no doubt ‘interested’ in illicit substances too. Charming. 👍😊
*See the updated section in Part 2 revealing all the bars involved in the $20,000 in 2 days.* Click Below
11. Actual – Physical Credit Card Theft! (Or Borrowing) Have Pin – Can Go To ATM!
Without any spiking, many of the Triangle bars have become experts in card fraud.
If you take a card to these places, and they are motivated to rob you, they will find the pin and card number/s and do so.
Often a portable machine comes to the punters’ sofa/ seat – then is taken back to get the receipt… Meanwhile, pin already noted via items 2, 6, 8, and 9, they put another few transactions on the bill. If a signature is also required, they just forge one later. Banks don’t take any notice of them. The bar owners know it, and also know about how much they can charge before the bank rejects…. They keep going often until this happens.
Alternatively they “try” a transaction, and tell the punter “Didn’t go through sir!…” A few days later.. look at that! So it did!
Fancy that!!
Infamously, a featured owner one night took the actual card, – took out a heap of cash from the ATM then went to Bui Vien and partied with some of her staff courtesy of the poor guy passed out on the sofa. A monster bill later, they came back & slipped the card back in the wallet before the guy finally came too…(At least that guy did come too!)
12. The Deluxe Deception – The Whole Combo Kit And Caboodle For The Lucky “Targeted” Customers!
Most sharks go for the easy prey they expect will give little resistance. The worst scammers of the area are no different and pick their targets for the big ass swindles. If they consider a punter wealthy and vulnerable – lookout – the whole combo kit and caboodle of all the scams will be put into play.
Sadly, The Hundreds of Uneducated Staff Will Be The Real Losers
Its not “Chicken Feed” being stolen and as a result,
soon there will be more Chickens to feed…
The current extent of sometimes dangerous scams & very serious fraud occurring in the area will ultimately cause self-destruction of many bar businesses. Punters don’t like being cheated, (they can tolerate minor hits of an extra beer on the bill now and then if there is real doubt,) but word gets out about regular scams and major fraud of $$$ Thousands. Pushing alcohol, balloons, and drugs even down customers’ throats purely to facilitate fraud and grand theft has already led to deadly consequences in so many places.
The short-term grab for cash tactics from the unscrupulous owner elements will most likely lead to prosecution and bar closures for the most guilty. (There are criminal cases brewing already.) The damage of reputation to the rest of the area will most severely hurt the many hundreds of uneducated girls trying to make ends meet (currently without having to prostitute themselves) by putting them out of work.
The low-life, greediest of the owner perpetrators never pass on the significant portion of their scam-induced profits to the staff, and soon their selfish actions will most likely be sending the very staff that were forced to help them, out on the street with nothing…
The following section is for EnrichLove.co PRO members ONLY. If you have Basic Free membership only this section is invisible to you. Upgrading to PRO membership and then revisiting this page will enable visibility.
The Best Solutions Currently For Preventing Fraud In Any Vietnam Bars
&
Saigon Criminal Lawyer Contacts (English Speaking)
This advice could save you a LOT of money!
EnrichLove.co PRO members ONLY.
Join PRO and refresh page then content will become visible
EnrichLove.co PRO members only.
Just $5.00 / year to upgrade
Saigon Criminal Lawyer Contacts (English Speaking)
EnrichLove.co PRO members ONLY.
Join PRO and refresh page then content will become visible.
Best Upmarket Bars in Saigon
Coming Soon for
EnrichLove.co PRO members Only
.
