Ho Chi Minh City police have published the numbers. Twenty-six cases. Fifty-four suspects. Thirty-three people charged. Dogs, cats, ornamental birds and turtles, stolen from homes, and in the dog case moved across provincial borders to be slaughtered, according to police. And two weeks before that summary, the same city announced the detention of twelve men accused of taking roughly 2,700 cats. The detail in those cases is worth reading closely, because the method is not unique to Vietnam, and neither is the gap in the law that follows it.
What the police actually announced
On 20 October 2026, Ho Chi Minh City Police released a summary of their work on pet theft since the start of the year. The figures were carried by Tuổi Trẻ and other Vietnamese outlets.
| Since January 2026 | |
|---|---|
| Cases handled | 26 |
| People investigated | 54 |
| Criminal cases opened | 13 |
| People formally charged | 33 |
| Charge | Theft of property |
The animals involved were dogs, cats, ornamental birds and turtles.
Police leadership said patrols and investigations would be stepped up, that the crackdown would target thieves, outlets and buyers, and that they would pursue offenders regardless of whether the value of the property was large or small. They added that a dog or cat may have little market value but carries emotional weight for its owner.
That commitment matters more than it sounds, and we will come back to it.
The dog ring
Police say the investigation began with theft reports from residents. They traced an interprovincial network that stole dogs, collected them, and slaughtered and sold them. Eleven people have been charged in this case alone.
Police name the alleged leaders as Nguyễn Bá Long, 29, of Đồng Nai city, and Nguyễn Long Yến Vân, 40, who lived with him as a partner.
How it was run, according to police:
- Homemade electric stun guns used to take animals quickly and quietly
- Vehicles with fake licence plates
- Territories divided among group members
- A multi-province chain for collecting, slaughtering and selling
Buyers were traced to Hà Nội, Hải Phòng, Hưng Yên and Ninh Bình, the length of the country from the city where the thefts occurred. Vietnamese press reports citing the investigation say the thefts were in outlying communes of Ho Chi Minh City, and that processing took place at Long’s home in Đồng Nai.
The dogs in this case were not being resold as pets. The animals were taken from homes, killed, and sold as meat. According to those reports, the meat carried no invoices or quarantine stamps and was sold below market price.
In another case, two dogs and thirty cats
Earlier in the year, in Tân Hưng ward, police caught five suspects in a rented apartment, accused of stealing and trading dogs and cats. The raid took place on 28 January.
They seized two dogs and thirty cats, in mesh bags, along with tools and vehicles. Police said they were verifying owners so the animals could be returned, and were coordinating care for the remaining cats.
The bigger case
The announcement that reached international media was a different one, and it is the larger story.
On 5 October 2026, Ho Chi Minh City police announced action against twelve men on property theft charges. According to their own initial statements to investigators, the group had stolen and trafficked around 2,700 cats. That figure comes from the suspects’ accounts, as reported by state media, not from a count of animals.
| Alleged ringleader and buyer | Lưu Thanh Bình, born 1987, from Cần Thơ |
| Operating hours | Mainly 11 pm to 4 am |
| Method | Small groups on motorbikes through residential areas, setting traps baited with fish outside homes |
| Rate | Roughly four to ten cats per person, per night |
| Role of the buyer | Bought the cats, held them, and resold them for meat |
The case began in Đông Thạnh commune, with further concern in Hóc Môn commune and in the Tân Thới Hiệp and An Hội Tây wards.
What was recovered: 50 cats and 55 cat traps, plus scales, bags, mobile phones, motorbikes and two fur-removing machines. Thirteen cats have been returned to their owners. The remainder are being cared for by Havepaws, an animal welfare nonprofit, while owners are sought. Police have urged others involved to come forward, and the investigation is continuing.
Fifty recovered, out of roughly 2,700 reportedly taken.
How many animals died, and why the answer is incomplete
This is the question every reader asks, and nobody has published a total.
For the cats: roughly 2,700 were reported stolen on the suspects’ own account, and 50 were recovered alive. What happened to the rest has not been stated in the reports PNN has reviewed. The ring’s purpose, on the police account, was resale into the meat trade.
For the dogs: there are partial counts, but no total. Vietnamese press reports on the dog case say a search of Long’s home on 8 October found 21 dead dogs (about 305 kg), 32 processed dogs (about 420 kg) and 57 processed cats (over 170 kg). Those reports also say 21 dogs were stolen on the night of 7 to 8 October alone.
Separately, those reports estimate the network moved more than 10 tonnes of dog meat, based on over VNĐ 860 million that four main buyers allegedly transferred. That is an investigators’ estimate carried in the press, not a figure in the police summary, and anyone quoting it should attribute it that way.
PNN is not going to convert tonnes into a body count. It can be done arithmetically, by dividing the meat by an assumed carcass weight, but the assumption does all the work, and a derived number would be quoted afterwards as though it were official. It would not be.
What the record does show is that the charge being prosecuted is theft, and the totals police report are the ones a theft case generates: cases, suspects, charges, seized equipment, recovered animals. The number of animals that died is not one of them.
Around 2,700 cats were reportedly taken. Thirteen are known to have gone home.
What every pet owner should take from the method
Strip out the geography and what is left is a pattern that applies in almost any city.
The thefts happened at night, in ordinary residential streets. Eleven at night to four in the morning, the hours when a cat is outside and nobody is watching.
They were systematic, not opportunistic. Traps, bait, areas divided between groups, and a standing arrangement to collect, hold and resell. This is not someone grabbing an animal they happened to see.
The volume per night was small and the total was enormous. Four to ten cats a night per person, repeated, becomes thousands. No single night looks like a crisis in any one neighbourhood, which is exactly why a ring can run for a long time.
Recovery rates are poor. Thirteen cats have gone home out of about 2,700 reported stolen. By the time a ring is caught, most of the animals are long gone.
The practical lessons follow directly. Keep cats in at night. Microchip and register, because identification is what turns a seized animal back into somebody’s pet. Report a missing pet to the police, not only to a neighbourhood group, because police say resident reports are how these investigations start. And treat a cluster of disappearances on one street as a pattern, not a coincidence.
The charge was theft of property
Here is the part worth sitting with.
In every one of these cases, the charge was theft of property.
Not cruelty. Not illegal slaughter. The charge in each case reported by police is theft. In law, these animals are stolen goods, and what was done to them afterwards is not what the charge measures.
This is not a quirk of Vietnamese law. Many legal systems treat a companion animal as the property of its owner, which means the offence of taking one is measured by what it was worth, not by what was done to it. In Vietnam, dogs and cats are private property, and according to the Associated Press, criminal prosecution generally applies when the stolen property is worth more than about 2 million dong (roughly US$77).
That is why the police commitment to act regardless of value matters more than it first appears. Where pet theft is a property crime, the value of the property tends to decide how seriously it is treated, and a street cat has almost no market value at all. A force that sets the value test aside is choosing to treat these as crimes worth pursuing on their own terms.
The number is the point
Twenty-six cases. Fifty-four suspects. Thirty-three charges. An account of the stun guns, the fake plates, the divided territories and the buyers in four provinces.
None of that had to be made public. A police force can break up a theft ring and say very little, and often that is what happens: the arrests are local news for a day and the scale of the problem stays invisible.
Publishing the count changes what can be asked. A force that says it handled 26 cases this year can be asked why, and whether that is more than last year, and what happened to the 21 people who were investigated but not charged. A force that publishes nothing cannot be asked anything.
The 2,700 cats are the number that will travel. The 26 cases are the one that will matter, if anyone follows them.
Pets News Network is India’s first dedicated media platform for the pet and animal industry. All suspects named by police in this report stand accused and have not been convicted; the accounts described are as stated by investigators. For breaking global pet news, brand coverage, and advertising enquiries, contact: info@petsnewsnetwork.com
