Da Nang police say English centre posed as American school for 200 pupils

Police in Da Nang say the director of a children's English centre ran a fake American international school for more than 200 pupils from 2019, charging families VND7 million to VND8 million a month per child and issuing transcripts he had printed himself. They released their initial findings on 1 November 2026.

Truong Van Thien Tu, 56, director of the Thien Lap Nhan English Language Centre, was charged with fraud and taken into custody on 14 October 2026. The security investigation agency of Da Nang police says he has confessed.

A school that did not exist

Da Nang's education department licensed the centre on 31 October 2017 to teach English to children. It had no licence to teach the national school curriculum or to run programmes with foreign partners. It operated from 177 Hai Phong Street in Thanh Khe ward, with branches on Van Tien Dung Street in Hoa Xuan ward and Nguyen Tat Thanh Street.

From 2019, police say, Tu presented himself as principal of "Prinberk Academy", which he described as a licensed private school in Huntington Beach, California. Pupils aged 5 to 16 attended full time, Monday to Friday, under what was sold as homeschooling.

Investigators found that no private school of that name existed in the US between 2019 and the end of 2024. It was not on the US list of schools allowed to issue I-20 forms for student visas, held no accreditation and had no power to award qualifications.

Police say Tu:

• had two embossed seals made in the Prinberk name and printed completion certificates and transcripts in Vietnam
• charged parents an extra US$100 to US$120 to "ship" transcripts from the US, promising them in 15 to 20 days
• mailed them in envelopes printed with a US flag and a California return address
• wrote invoices describing the fees as education support or play and physical development

After the complaints

When the education department questioned him in November 2024, Tu denied that Prinberk classes ran at the centre. Police say he then moved the pupils to Bao An Nhien Services Co., Ltd., a company registered at the same branch addresses with a relative as director, and kept teaching the same programme.

He then asked the department to dissolve the centre, saying it was not working and could not attract learners. The department issued the dissolution order on 7 January 2026.

Many parents had taken their children out of state schools to enrol them, and some paid hundreds of millions of dong in total. Once they learned the documents had no legal value, they asked for proper transcripts and refunds and received neither.

Police have asked families whose children studied at either the centre or Bao An Nhien to come forward.