Truong Ho Phuong Nga 

Nga, 28, was born in Hanoi and moved to live in Russia with her family when she was 10.

She was crowned Miss Vietnam in Russia in 2007 when she was 20 years old. After she graduated from a university in Russia, she returned Vietnam and worked as a model and MC in HCM City.

According to HCM City police, she was girlfriend of a businessman in HCM City for several years. During that time, she allegedly convinced him to give her money to buy some houses at good prices in the city but then bought nothing and said goodbye to him.

The businessman was trying to find her to recover his money but Nga declared some documents proving that she had already returned all the money to him. The businessman asked for police’s investigation which then found that all the documents had fake signatures.

On March 19, police in HCM City decided to arrest her for allegedly swindling VND16b from the businessman.

Poet Duong Ky Anh, initiator of the Miss Vietnam contest, said Nga should be revoked her crown if she is taken to the court.

“Currently, Vietnam has yet to have any regulation on revoking crown of beauty queens. However, they not deserve to possess the crown when they commit crime,” said Anh.

Recently, several other Vietnamese beauty queens have committed crime, including former Miss South Mekong 2009 Vo Thi My Xuan who led a prostitute ring involving beauties, models and students and was sentenced to two years and six months; Lady Miss Global 2012 Tristine Tram Bui who was sentenced to three years in jail for marijuana trafficking.

“Organisers of beauty contests should be more careful in criteria so as to uphold traditional cultural and moral values and prevent possible misconducts,” the poet said.