‘HNL Swindler’: California Man Accused Of Scams On Oʻahu

It all started with a disagreement over a dog named Cupcake. 

What ensued has become an online outcry against an alleged serial scammer named Quan “David” Hoang Vu, a 32-year-old with a warrant out for his arrest in California who for months has been living in Kakaʻako ​​luxury condos after dentists in Honolulu and Irvine, California, allege he stole tens of thousands of dollars from them.

Honolulu resident Dominique Bird was happy to dog-sit Cupcake at her place in Kakaʻako when Vu, who she says she was dating at the time, went on what he said was a business trip to California. Even though Cupcake’s canine culinary habits included things like blueberries and coconut water, Bird was fine fronting the money for Cupcake’s food in the belief that Vu would pay her back. 

Everything changed, Bird said, after Vu extended his trip from one week to more than three and, upon his return to Honolulu, told Bird he had been involved with another woman while away. She claims he also stiffed her on a $75 reimbursement for the blueberries and coconut water.

After digging up some dirt on Vu — including his outstanding charges in California, identity theft and credit card fraud charges in Virginia, which were eventually dropped, and an indecent exposure charge in Honolulu — Bird published a TikTok video. As a warning for other women who might meet Vu on Tinder, Bird shared the results of her background check and her personal tale of woe.

To Bird's surprise, the reel went viral, turning into an interstate forum for people who have been unable to get help from local law enforcement or had thought they were the only ones who had run into trouble with Vu. That led to a series of reels sharing new information as it came in through comments and direct messages. Bird dubbed Vu “The HNL Swindler,” inspired by a Netflix documentary, “The Tinder Swindler,” about a con artist who scammed women to support his luxe lifestyle.

Among those who saw one of Bird’s videos and reached out to her was Dr. Monique Sison-Aweau, an Orange County dentist who recognized Vu as the former job candidate who she claims stole $18,000 from her practice in 2025. 

Vu has been charged with grand theft in the Orange County case. A Honolulu dentist has since accused him of stealing even more money from his practice. A Honolulu medical office also has reported Vu to the police for stealing a laptop.

At first, Vu didn’t respond to two voicemails and text messages from Civil Beat requesting comment. One was a detailed text asking him to comment on the allegations made by the dentists, as well as Bird’s accusation that he broke his promise to pay for Cupcake’s blueberries and coconut water when he went out of town. 

Late Sunday he texted to say that the story was "completely wrong." Called back, he said he did not know either of the dentists accusing him of stealing and had paid Bird — who he described as a friend, not a girlfriend — back for the dog food.

"Thank you for listening to my side of the story and redoing everything," he wrote in another phone text following the Sunday call.

Bird, who says she dated Vu for three months last summer, said she never dreamed people would come out of the woodwork when she posted the first of her series of TikTok videos.

Bird took down the videos earlier this week after she said Vu threatened legal action against her. Still, she says she’s gotten about 20 text messages from women who said Vu lied to them while dating them and businesses that either hired him and later accused him of scamming them or got a weird vibe during interviews and didn't hire him.

“It’s actually kind of exhausting,” Bird said. “Every day it’s a new person giving me new information.”

Vu Knew The Dental Business

Bird, a 39-year-old state government worker, says Vu was easy to fall for when they first met on Tinder in May. Vu, who went by “David,” was kind and attentive, with a friendly, outgoing personality. He seemed to know everyone in the neighborhood when they would go for walks around his condo at swanky Victoria Place. 

“He came across like a golden retriever,” she said of Vu’s affable manner. 

They were also both foodies and would go out to eat every day.

Finally, Vu seemed unusually open -- transparent about his past, his work, his significant wealth and income and properties he claimed to own, Bird said, including the condo where he lived in Kakaʻako.

“I would tell my friends, ‘This guy’s so honest,’” she said.

What she found out later changed her perspective.

During what Bird described as their three-month relationship, court records show that Vu was wanted in Orange County, California, on charges of grand theft and identity theft.

The Orange County dentist at the center of that case, Sison-Aweau, recalls Vu making a good impression during a phone interview after he responded to her ad for an office manager posted on Indeed in March 2025. Vu could talk the talk of running a dental office well enough that Sison-Aweau and her husband, Jamison Aweau, called him in for an in-person interview, followed by a half-day working interview at the office in Irvine.

Significantly, they cut him a check for $200 from the practice’s account for the half-day interview.

Sison-Aweau extended an offer contingent on Vu agreeing to a routine background check, she said. Vu signed an employment letter but wouldn’t agree to the background check. In the meantime, her husband, who said he had a hunch that Vu wasn’t what he seemed, started checking his resume and credentials — which he said didn’t pan out.

After Sison-Aweau told Vu he wasn’t getting the job after all, she started noticing small charges on their practice’s checking account, adding up to $18,000, that she hadn’t made. The couple filed a police report to help with their insurance claim and said they learned Vu had allegedly used the routing and account numbers from the check they had given him to pay off an American Express card.

In April, Vu was charged by the Orange County District Attorney with identity theft and grand theft, court records show. Records show he is classified in the court system as a fugitive with warrants out for his arrest. In a text Sunday night, Vu said that he had had a warrant for an unpaid fine in 2021 and that it had since been cleared.

Irvine Police Department Det. Tin Truong, who Aweau said has been handling the case, did not respond to requests for comment. The Orange County District Attorney’s Office also did not respond to a request for information on the status of the case.

In a phone call Monday, Vu said he was living in Honolulu in 2025 and had never heard of Sison-Aweau or her husband. He said he was not aware of any court case for theft in Orange County, before shifting his story and saying that he and a lawyer had checked the California case and the defendant was a different person several decades older who happened to share his exact name.

According to court records, however, Vu's birth year matches that of the defendant in Orange County.

Vu called Bird "completely crazy" and said she had been demanding large amounts of money from him, adding that he had called police several times to report her for harassing him.

Cash Payments And Blank Checks

Vu looked as good on paper to Dr. Kyrell Wright as he had to Sison-Aweau. A dentist with offices in Kaimukī and Kalihi, Wright was desperate to find an office manager and was sold by Vu’s application posted on Indeed and his apparent knowledge of dental business systems. Wright hired Vu as the office manager in Kaimukī in May 2025 — soon after Vu was charged in Orange County, but before his arraignment.

Within months, Wright learned that Vu wasn’t what he seemed. According to Wright and his operations manager, Donni Ching, Vu would offer patients discounts if they paid cash, then pocket the cash himself and scrub the patients’ procedures from their medical records. In some cases, Wright said, Vu didn’t record the procedures at all.

For patients who said they could pay only by check, Wright alleges, Vu would have the patients leave blank the “pay-to-the-order-of line,” explaining the office had an ink stamp to fill it in. 

Vu would then fill in his name and deposit the check to his personal account, Wright alleges. 

The scam came to light, Wright says, after patients started complaining about receiving invoices showing outstanding balances for procedures they had paid Vu for. Ching said Vu was fired in October 2025. 

On the phone Monday, Vu said that he'd never heard of Wright and had never worked for him.

But Wright estimates Vu embezzled at least $80,000 from his practice. His team filed a report with the Honolulu Police Department, which Ching said hasn’t shown much interest in the case. Only recently, Ching said, did HPD tell them it had subpoenaed Vu’s bank records.

Meanwhile, she said, “We still have patients coming in to this day saying my statement is wrong.”

TikTok Videos Connected Doctors and Dentists

Dentists like Wright and Sison-Aweau say they wouldn’t have known the extent of Vu’s alleged cons were it not for Bird’s TikTok videos. Sison-Aweau said she was in bed early one morning when Bird’s reel showed up on her feed. It took her a few minutes, she said, to realize the guy pictured was her former job candidate, whom the Orange County District Attorney had charged for ripping her off.

Jamison remembers his wife running downstairs at 6 a.m. to show him the reel. They were stunned that it had popped up on her feed.

“I don’t know how the algorithm did that,” Jamison said.

Wright’s office learned about the reel from a former assistant who saw it and wrote to Bird. A medical office Vu worked for briefly before being let go also saw the reel and contacted Bird. That office had filed a police report for theft, alleging Vu had failed to return a company laptop after he left the practice. 

Chelsea Arakawa, executive director of a Honolulu surgical center that claims it was targeted by Vu, expressed frustration at the lack of police response. 

“There is evidence that he has been scamming and stealing from local businesses and people, many of whom are elderly, yet the police can’t take action unless each affected person files a report themselves,” she said. “Someone like this shouldn’t be allowed to continue preying on our community.”

Honolulu Police Department spokeswoman Jocelyn Oshiro provided a statement from the Criminal Investigation Division, which said, “If the individual has not been arrested, HPD can neither confirm nor deny whether an individual is under investigation. No additional information is available for release at this time.”

Bird said she still gets messages from people saying they see Vu walking Cupcake around Kakaʻako, where he still lives, in a different luxury condo across the street from Victoria Place. On Thursday, Civil Beat received a photograph from one of Vu’s alleged victims showing Vu, dressed in pink shorts, a white T-shirt and slippers, walking Cupcake, a small white and brown spaniel mix, in a park in Ward Village.

It baffles Bird and others that Honolulu authorities haven’t done anything, while their counterparts in Orange County have filed charges.

“The frustration I feel is on another level,” Bird says. “I just can’t imagine what it’s like for the dentists. I just can’t comprehend how he’s walking around free.”

Vu hasn’t gotten off scot-free during his time in Hawaiʻi. In May, court records show, he was charged with indecent exposure, accused of exposing his genitals to someone he wasn’t married to in a way “likely to cause affront.” 

Asked about that, Vu told Civil Beat that he was inside his apartment when he was accused of indecent exposure and his neighbors had filmed him through his windows.

He initially pleaded not guilty, records show, but after prosecutors reduced the charge to disorderly conduct, Vu changed his plea and paid a $100 fine.