Five suspects arrested nearly 3 years after robbery of Danish tourists

The criminal police division of the Da Nang Police Department announced on August 2 that it had named five men as accused in a robbery case and placed them in temporary detention. This development comes nearly three years after the incident involving two Danish tourists in Hoi An. The accused are Truong Van Ngoc Toan, 33, Ho Tan Cau, 42, Nguyen Quoc Quang, 39, Huynh Tan Tai, 34, and Tran Van Duc, 37. Investigators found that at around 3 a.m. on August 23, 2023, Toan and Cau offered the two foreign tourists Andreas Myrup, then 21, and William Trollund, then 20, a ride back to their hotel in Tra Que, a herb-growing village on the edge of Hoi An. The fare was set at VND40,000 ($1.50). Quang, Tai and Duc, who worked the same patch, saw the pair pick up foreign passengers and followed on their own motorbikes. Investigators found the three were looking to engineer confusion at the moment of payment in order to take more cash from the passengers. As the bikes stopped near the hotel, Myrup took out his wallet. Toan shone a flashlight directly into his eyes and into the open wallet, then took all VND540,000 ($21) inside and gave back no change. Trollund handed Cau a VND50,000 note ($1.90) and asked for change. Cau had none and asked to borrow money from his friend, which prompted Myrup to open his wallet a second time and find the cash gone. Toan produced VND500,000 ($19). Myrup, who believed he had lost around VND5 million ($190), refused the note and threw it on the ground. Tai and Duc walked over carrying a wooden stick roughly 60 cm long, pointed it at the two men and shouted "go, go" in English until both fled inside their hotel. Duc picked the note up off the ground. The five regrouped at An Hoi, the footbridge into the old town, where Duc handed VND80,000 ($3) to each of the other four and kept what was left. The investigation was suspended and restarted this year after the Da Nang police chief ordered a review of dormant files. Investigators rebuilt the evidence and established what each man had done before making the arrests. The case is still being investigated. Hoi An, a former trading port on Vietnam's central coast, drew 4 million visitors in 2023, 4 million of them foreign, according to city figures published by the government news portal. The town logged 2.8 million foreign tourists in the first six months of 2025, before it was merged into Da Nang. Vietnam logged a record 21.2 million international arrivals last year. Subsidiary of VnExpress License number: 71/GP-CBC, Ministry of Information andCommunications, September 22, 2021 Editor-in-Chief: Pham Van Hieu Email: [email protected]: 028 7300 9999 - Ext 8556 10th floor, Block A FPT Tower, 10 Pham Van Bach, Cau Giay Ward, Hanoi