📰 From the news · Impersonating a real college/agent
4,544 health-insurance consultations, VND1.3 billion and a specialist diploma not in the university's database: the Ca Mau clinic doctor whose diploma one verification letter undid
In Vietnam, a doctor's right to see patients runs through the provincial Department of Health, and most routine consultations are paid for by the state health-insurance fund through regional social security offices. Postgraduate specialist qualifications are issued by universities including the University of Medicine and Pharmacy of Ho Chi Minh City, which keeps a database of the degrees it has awarded. That database settled a case in the southern province of Ca Mau in 2025, months after the patients had been seen.
According to Tuoi Tre News and VnExpress, a 50-year-old man worked as an internal-medicine doctor at Y Duc Sai Gon General Clinic in Ho Thi Ky commune, Ca Mau, from 25 January to 11 May 2025. In that time he conducted 4,544 health-insurance consultations costing the insurance fund more than VND1.3 billion (about US$49,310, Tuoi Tre News said). Tuoi Tre News reported that he resigned after his credentials were uncovered.
Mot The Gioi reported the paper trail. The Ca Mau Department of Health asked the university to verify his diploma in letter No. 2411/SYT-TTr of 5 June 2025. The university replied in letter No. 2512/DHYD-SDH of 16 June 2025 that the specialist level I (internal medicine) diploma in the name of N.X.H., born 20 October 1975 in Ca Mau, was not in its training and degree database. VnExpress reported that the director of Social Security regional office XXXII ordered the Thoi Binh social security office to recover the money, that the Department of Health reported the case to the police and the provincial People's Committee, and that police were verifying whether the diploma is fake. The clinic could be fined VND20 to 30 million under Decree 117/2020, VnExpress said, if it is established that it knowingly used a practitioner with an unlawful diploma.
Whatever the police conclude about the document itself, what failed here was the absence of a check. VnExpress reported that the clinic had put him forward to the local social security office for approval to conduct insured consultations, and the fund then paid for more than four thousand of them. The trade in blank certificates and rubber stamps that supplies such documents is recorded elsewhere on this site, in the story of the Vietnamese forgery workshops.
For a student or family weighing a medical course abroad, the same check is available. Ask the university that supposedly issued a certificate, not the person holding it, whether the degree exists in its records, and ask the regulator whether the practitioner, college or agent appears on its register. Pay fees to the institution directly, keep your original certificates, and treat a qualification as unverified until the body that awarded it says otherwise.
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This is a news-sourced case summary written by the TrustMBBS team, not a first-person account; see the sources above. They reflect one person's experience and are not a verdict on any institution. Report your own: Report a scam or tell your story.