Nguyen Van Dong, 26, and his brother-in-law Le Xuan Dung, 23, of Dak Nong Province in the Central Highlands were sentenced by a court in neighboring Dak Lak on Wednesday.

The indictment said that in October, 2017, a woman identified only as Dao Thi Theu invited Dong to join her in tricking and selling Vietnamese women to China where they would become wives of Chinese men, media reports said.

Dong was promised VND25 million (over $1,000) for every woman he procured for the ring.

Dong asked Dung to join him. The two either used Facebook to talk with the women or introduced themselves as mobile phone salesmen recruiting staff for their teams.

Dung befriended H’Ngan Adrong, 27, an ethnic minority woman in Dak Lak Province.

On March 8 last year, Dung and Dong took H’Ngan up north to Lang Son Province on the Chinese border. They handed her over to a Vietnamese man, identified only as Quan.

Quan took H’Ngan to Theu in China. Theu gave H’Ngan to an intermediary, whom police have not able to identify. Eventually H'Ngan was sold to a Chinese man as a wife for VND90 million ($3,850).

H’Ngan escaped shortly after, but she ran into Theu again, who sold her to another Chinese man for VND105 million. H’Ngan escaped again and this time, succeeded in returning to Vietnam.

As of going to press, however, there was no further information on whether H'Ngan had borne any child for the Chinese "husband." Other details of her escape have also not been revealed.

Using the same modus-operandi, in April and May last year, Dung and Dong coordinated with Theu to sell three more ethnic women in Daklak, H’Nhung H’long, 19, H’Huong Kbrong, 33, and H’Doal Eban, 24, to China.

Five days after being taken to China, the three girls were rescued by local police and sent back home.

In those three cases, Dong and Dung were paid VND57 million each.

The two also told the court that they had sold Giang Ra Phuong, a 19-year-old girl from the southern province of Kien Giang and another named Thuy, whose identify and background is still unknown, to China.

Police are still investigating those two cases.

Aside from 12 years in jail, Dong and Dung have been asked to pay a total of VND132 million to their victims.

As reported earlier, Vietnamese girls and women are being sold to Chinese men who are either old or poor to afford a local wife, and some poor women are even lured to sell newborns to Chinese persons.

Data from the Ministry of Public Security shows that between 2010 and the third quarter of last year, Vietnam recorded over 3,000 human trafficking cases, in which 4,500 traffickers traded almost 7,000 victims, mostly women and children in poor and rural areas.

A majority of them were sold to men seeking wives in China, Malaysia and South Korea, or just to bear children or forced into prostitution. Many of the victims were approached through social networks like Facebook and Zalo. Besides financial difficulties of the victims, police officers have said that negligence, easy immigration procedures and gender imbalance in destination countries are responsible for the surge in human trafficking.