Portrait of F88 boss Phung Anh Tuan

Phung Anh Tuan (nicknamed Tuan Pat) was born in 1984 in Phu Tho province, which is considered a “heavyweight” hacker in the national technology world, used to be the director of a network security company. Phung Anh Tuan studied at Hung Vuong High School for the Gifted and was also an excellent student of Hanoi University of Business and Technology.

Currently, according to information from the National Business Registration Portal, Mr. Tuan is the legal representative of F88 Business Joint Stock Company (established in 2016). Mr. Tuan is also a representative of F88 Investment Joint Stock Company established in 2015, which is the parent company of F88 Business Joint Stock Company.

Leaving university, Tuan worked as an information technology officer for a number of large corporations such as VASC, Viettel, and Hipt. After that, Tuan quit his job and started a network security company in 2003, the first start-up in the field of security and safety in Vietnam. By 2018, this company reached the top of “Asia’s Leading B2B Companies”. This has helped Phung Anh Tuan strengthen his position in the field of information technology.

Talking about the opportunity to turn to the pawn industry, Tuan once said that at the beginning of his business, because he could not afford to pay staff salaries, he often brought his belongings to pawn. Thanks to that, Tuan realized the potential of this field and started working.

“The early period was still very difficult, sometimes you had to go pawn to pursue your passion and realized that the pawn market is extremely potential and there are still many opportunities to develop the company professionally and professionally. It’s different if I know how to combine my technological advantages into business activities, but it took me 5 years to have enough ‘time, location, and human harmony’ to do it,” Tuan said.

F88 Business Joint Stock Company was born on June 30, 2013, with its head office located in Hanoi. This pawn system has been invested by two major investment funds in the world, Mekong Capital and Granite Oak.

Initially, this company had a charter capital of 54.5 billion VND. In which, F88 Investment Joint Stock Company (F88 Invest) holds the dominant position, with an ownership rate of up to 99.99% of charter capital. After many times of capital increase, updated to October 2022, F88 has a charter capital of 566.9 billion dong.

Meanwhile, F88 Invest was established in November 2015, with its head office address at several houses on Hung Vuong Street, Viet Tri city, Phu Tho province. Updated to November 2022, the capital scale of F88 Invest reached VND 69.88 billion.

With more than 600 transaction offices, F88 is now present in 63 provinces and cities nationwide.

On the morning of March 6, at Van Phon Tower (Nguyen Oanh Street, Go Vap District, Ho Chi Minh City), Ho Chi Minh City police executed a blockade order and searched F88 Business Joint Stock Company.

This move was made after the time the Ho Chi Minh City Police Department coordinated with the Go Vap District Police to investigate and record a complaint about the F88 Business Joint Stock Company carrying out lending activities to expropriate assets in the style “terrorism”.

As reflected by many customers, “hiding” under the guise of grandeur, in fact, the inner workings of the F88 system are pawn loans in the style of “black credit”. Currently, F88 Company is lending with interest rates ranging from 1,500 to 2,000 VND/1 million/day (equivalent to 4.5 – 7.5%/month or 54 – 90%/year).

On the afternoon of March 6, Ho Chi Minh City Police coordinated with professional departments of the Ministry of Public Security to search many branches of F88 Company in Ho Chi Minh City. During the inspection, the police seized many documents, records and machinery.

The case is still under investigation by the police.