Vietnam’s booming social commerce market is exposing a costly weakness: consumers buying on trust as influencers turn cheap products into supposedly premium regional specialties.
Indian buffalo meat passed off by Hai Sapa as a premium northwestern specialty, and Lai Chau ginseng sold under the prized Ngoc Linh name are exposing widespread deception over agricultural origins as social media grows into a marketplace worth tens of billions of dollars.
Deceiving customers for millions of dollars
Lao Cai Provincial Police recently decided to prosecute and temporarily detain Vu Hoang Hai, also known as Hai Sapa TV, for investigation on charges of deceiving customers.
According to authorities, Hai Sapa TV used his influence on social media platforms to direct his wife, Bui Thi Kim Tuyen, to sign a contract to distribute spicy dried buffalo meat produced by Hoang Nam General Production and Trading JSC using imported frozen buffalo meat from India.
Hai Sapa allegedly passed off spicy dried buffalo meat as a premium dried buffalo specialty from Vietnam’s northwestern region.
Between 2022 and 2025, Hai’s wife purchased VND30 billion (around $1.14 million) worth of the spicy dried buffalo meat. The couple then advertised the product on social media as a “northwestern dried buffalo specialty” and put the “Hai Sapa TV” logo on the packaging before selling it to consumers.
On online marketplaces, Sapa TV’s smoked buffalo meat was offered at VND600,000 ($23) for a 500-gram package. That meant one kilogram of buffalo meat originating from India, marketed as a specialty from Vietnam’s northwestern region, was sold for as much as VND1.2 million ($46).
Consumers had barely recovered from the shock of Indian buffalo meat being transformed into a premium northwestern specialty when Le Thi Thanh Hang, the TikToker known as “Hang Le Sam Ngoc Linh” and a resident of Dong Tien Commune in Thanh Hoa, was prosecuted for livestreaming sales of Lai Chau ginseng under the name Ngoc Linh ginseng.
Hang had previously traded Ngoc Linh ginseng originating from Kon Tum. By late 2023, she began buying Lai Chau ginseng plants and roots after noticing their characteristics and appearance were similar to Ngoc Linh ginseng while their prices were lower. Yet during livestream sales, she continued to introduce the products as genuine Ngoc Linh ginseng from Kon Tum.
In August 2025, Phu Tho Provincial Police also launched criminal proceedings, prosecuted and temporarily detained Vu Thi Huong, director of MQ Food One Member Co., Ltd., over alleged production and trading of counterfeit food products.
To gain consumers’ trust, Huong had previously established a “virtual” branch named Cuong Huong One Member Co., Ltd., later renamed MQ Food One Member Co., Ltd., in Ha Giang. She printed the address on product packaging alongside the words “highland specialty,” even though the company conducted no production or business activities in the locality.
Notably, from 2020 to August 2025, Huong used more than 1,000 tonnes of frozen meat to produce around 400 tonnes of dried meat, generating estimated revenue of more than VND100 billion ($3.8 million). At the time of inspection, the company’s cold storage facilities still contained dozens of tonnes of Indian buffalo meat and imported pork, along with more than six tonnes of dried buffalo and pork that had already been packaged as finished products.
Deception over product origins - turning cheap goods into expensive ones or passing off unbranded products under well-known names - has persisted for years.
But as social media has evolved into a vast marketplace generating tens of billions of dollars in annual sales, the risk of agricultural products being misrepresented on a much larger scale is also growing.
What is striking is that these fraud cases are no longer worth just a few million or a few hundred million dong. Their scale has reached tens of billions, and even hundreds of billions, of dong. Consumers can easily fall for carefully crafted stories about regional specialties told through short videos, the reputations of celebrities and a tendency to make purchases based on emotion.
Selling through the ‘halo effect,’ buying on trust
TikToker Hang Le Sam Ngoc Linh bought lower-priced Lai Chau ginseng and promoted it during livestreams as Ngoc Linh ginseng to sell at higher prices. Photo: CACC
Statistics compiled by Metric show that total sales across Vietnam’s four major e-commerce platforms reached VND429.7 trillion ($16.3 billion) in 2025, surging 34.75% from the previous year.
Mordor Intelligence forecasts that Vietnam’s e-commerce market will reach around $33.6 billion in 2026. One of the drivers is the continued rise of “video commerce,” with livestreaming and key opinion leaders, or KOLs, on major commerce platforms continuing to stimulate consumer spending.
As social media and e-commerce platforms increasingly become enormous online marketplaces, Ha Hong Viet, director of Sellator Media and Strategy JSC, said celebrities and influencers selling agricultural products or other goods are not merely selling a product’s functions and quality. In effect, they are also selling the public’s trust and attention.
“In other words, celebrities sell products through their own ‘halo effect,’” he said. Consumers, meanwhile, buy on trust and, fearing they may miss an opportunity, often skip the process of verifying a product.
Capitalizing on shoppers’ tendency to place orders within seconds, some celebrities misrepresent product origins to deceive customers and reap substantial profits. Indian buffalo meat being “transformed” into an expensive northwestern specialty, or lower-priced Lai Chau ginseng being sold under the prestigious Ngoc Linh name, are telling examples.
To restore order to the market and promote sustainable development, Viet said authorities and social media platforms need to strengthen controls over product quality and origins. Faster and more effective channels should also be established to receive and handle consumer complaints.
In an environment where consumers often make purchases based heavily on emotion, trust can collapse just as quickly once dishonesty is uncovered. The consequences do not stop with the seller, but can also hurt producers and thousands of farmers who are doing business legitimately, he warned.
According to Nguyen Dang Sinh, chairman of the Vietnam Association for Anti-Counterfeiting and Trademark Protection (VATAP), many large-scale cases involving unsafe food, counterfeit goods and imitation products had already been exposed well before the recent incidents. These cases show that post-market inspections by authorities remain inadequate.
He said Vietnam’s agricultural sector introduced a traceability system for agricultural, forestry and fisheries products from July 1, designed to make product origins transparent from the place of production all the way to the dining table.
Vietnam also has stringent regulations governing product quality, labeling and traceability, as well as the responsibilities of e-commerce sellers, livestreamers, KOLs and KOCs in product advertising. These provide the legal basis for authorities to strengthen market inspections and oversight.
Yet in a market where consumers can buy agricultural products with just a few clicks, Sinh said authorities must step up post-market inspections rather than allow oversight to weaken. As responsibilities and powers are decentralized to local authorities, adequate staffing and funding must also follow.
Vietnamnet.vn
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