Apricot flower traditionally signals the arrival of Tet, Vietnam’s Lunar New Year festival. However, this is also the time to see more scams related to ornamental apricots.

Scammers understand the wish, and even the need, of every family to have at least one apricot tree for Tet, and they have used this demand to fuel their business.

These cheaters can earns dozens of millions of dong by selling fake apricot trees that are actually worth less than a million through a complicated swindle.

‘Technology’ splices apricot with stump

The ‘knowhow’ needed to create an aged ornamental apricot is generally based on ‘ingredients’ such as an apricot sapling, a stump or a wooden chunk, sawdust, glue, and pastel.

A house owned by a man named Hung, located in alley 44 in Ward 14, Go Vap district, is an example of a location where fake apricot trees are ‘grafted’. Hung’s house is full of the material needed for his work, including apricot saplings with trunks smaller than a human finger.

He is assisted by an ‘apricot artist’ named Minh. A Tuoi Tre journalist watched Minh turn a sapling into an aged ornamental bonsai.

Minh picked up a wooden stick as big as a man’s wrist and sawed off a 20cm chunk. The piece of wood was then bound between two apricot sapling trees, and he put ... Xem thêm