How a Dog Named Cupcake Led Police to a Man Accused of Scamming Two Dental Practices

Edited by Dentaltown staff

It started with $75 worth of blueberries and coconut water for a spaniel mix named Cupcake. It ended with Irvine police arresting a man accused of stealing from dental practices in California and Hawaii as he walked down a street in Newport Beach, California.

Quan “David” Hoang Vu was arrested Nov. 4 and booked into the Orange County Jail on outstanding warrants and on charges of identity theft and grand theft. The charges stem from an alleged scheme at an Irvine dental office in 2025. A Honolulu dentist separately alleges Vu took at least $80,000 from his practice, though no charges have been filed in Hawaii. Vu has not been convicted and has denied the dentists’ allegations.

The Irvine case allegedly began with a paycheck for a job Vu never got. Dr. Monique Sison-Aweau said she advertised for an office manager on Indeed in March 2025. Vu knew the dental business well enough to advance from a phone interview to an in-person interview to a half-day working interview. The practice paid him $200 by check for the half day.

Sison-Aweau said she offered Vu the job on the condition that he pass a background check, which he wouldn’t agree to. Meanwhile, her husband, Jamison Aweau, found that Vu’s resume and credentials didn’t hold up. After the offer fell through, small charges the practice hadn’t made began showing up on its checking account, eventually totaling $18,000. The couple said that after filing a police report, they learned the routing and account numbers from that $200 check had allegedly been used to pay off an American Express card. The Orange County District Attorney charged Vu in April 2025, court records show.

Soon after those charges were filed, Dr. Kyrell Wright says he hired Vu through Indeed as office manager of his practice in Honolulu’s Kaimuki neighborhood. Wright, who also has an office in Kalihi, and his operations manager, Donni Ching, allege that Vu offered patients a discount for paying cash, kept the money and erased the procedures from their records. In some cases, they say, he never recorded the treatment at all.

Patients paying by check were allegedly told to leave the payee line blank because the office had a stamp for it. Wright alleges Vu then filled in his own name and deposited the checks into his personal account.

The alleged scheme unraveled when patients began getting statements showing balances for treatment they had already paid for. Ching said Vu was fired in October 2025, and Wright estimates the practice lost at least $80,000. The practice reported it to Honolulu police, and Ching said the department only recently told them it had subpoenaed Vu’s bank records. Patients are still coming in to dispute their statements, she said.

In an October interview, Vu said he had never heard of either dentist, had never worked for Wright, and believed the Orange County case involved a much older man with the same name. The birth year in the court records, however, matches Vu’s. He did not respond to requests for comment after his arrest.

That’s where Cupcake comes in. Honolulu resident Dominique Bird says she dated Vu for about three months and dog-sat Cupcake while he was on a California trip that stretched from one week to more than three. She claims he never repaid the $75 she spent on the dog’s blueberries and coconut water. Vu has described Bird as a friend and said he paid her back.

Bird ran a background check, then posted TikTok videos warning other women and dubbing Vu the “HNL Swindler,” a nod to the Netflix documentary “The Tinder Swindler.” The videos went viral and became a forum for people in both states with their own stories about him. Sison-Aweau said the reel popped up on her feed early one morning, and her husband recalled her running downstairs at 6 a.m. to show him.

Then came the tip. Bird said someone close to Vu told her he and his current girlfriend were planning to attend the Oogie Boogie Bash, a Halloween event at Disneyland. She called California police, who eventually found Vu, the girlfriend and Cupcake walking down a street in Newport Beach. “Cupcake was the one that gave him away,” Bird said.

Irvine police leaned into the puns in a Facebook post about the arrest, calling Vu “a real pain in the molars” for law enforcement. Cupcake, the department noted, went home with the girlfriend.

Vu was scheduled to be arraigned Nov. 6 in Santa Ana and was being held by the Orange County Sheriff’s Office. No outcome from that hearing had been reported as of Nov. 10.

The $200 check is the detail practice owners will remember. Paying a candidate for a working interview by check is routine, and in Sison-Aweau’s account, the numbers printed on it were enough to start pulling money out of the practice’s account. Many banks offer ACH debit blocks or positive-pay screening on business accounts, which can stop or flag withdrawals the owner never authorized.

The Honolulu allegations point to a different gap. If Wright’s account holds up, the losses came to light only after patients started questioning their statements. Matching each day’s completed procedures against the ledger and the deposit is the routine check meant to catch that, and in many offices that job belongs to the office manager.

In Irvine, what ended the hiring process was a background check the candidate wouldn’t sign and a spouse who decided to verify the resume.

Has a front office hire ever cost your practice money, and what’s the warning sign you’d watch for now?

Sources:
Honolulu Civil Beat, “‘HNL Swindler’: California Man Accused Of Scams On O?ahu,” Oct. 28, 2026: civilbeat.org/hnl-swindler-man-accused-of-more-scams-on-oahu
Honolulu Civil Beat, “‘HNL Swindler’ Arrested In California,” Nov. 6, 2026: civilbeat.org/hnl-swindler-arrested-in-california
FOX 11 Los Angeles, “OC man arrested for posing as fake dentist,” video, Nov. 7, 2026: foxla.com/video/oc-man-arrested