Short answer: riding on a licence that was never issued by a licensing authority, or one altered after issue, is treated exactly like riding with no licence: 2,000,000–4,000,000 VND on a bike up to and including 125 cc, 6,000,000–8,000,000 VND above that, under Article 18 of Decree 168/2024/NĐ-CP. The document itself is confiscated. And forgery does not stay administrative — making or using forged identity documents can cross into criminal liability, which no fine pays off.
What the decree treats as a fake
Article 18(5)(a) of the decree lists, in one clause, every version of “your paper is not a licence”: no licence at all; a licence fully deducted of points; a licence not issued by a competent authority; a licence that has been tampered with (tẩy xóa); a licence no longer valid; a licence for the wrong class of machine. The point of the single band is that police do not need to decide whether the licence is forged, bought online, altered or borrowed — none of them counts, and all of them cost the same.
The follow-up is Article 18(10): a tampered licence must be surrendered — the administrative system expels the document itself, so the rider cannot ride off and try it at the next checkpoint.
The criminal layer the fine schedule cannot show
The decree’s bands are administrative — they price violations that have not reached criminal prosecution. Forging or materially altering a licence, and using a forged document of a state authority, are offences under the Penal Code, with exposure far beyond a fine. The seller side is priced where the decree can see it: producing fake number plates, or trafficking plates not made by the state’s authorised producers, carries 10,000,000–12,000,000 VND for individuals and confiscation under Article 31 of the decree — and the licence-side equivalents travel the same direction.
Where the fake licences actually come from
The common versions are predictable: online “international licences” sold to tourists by non-governmental websites, which are not treaty documents and do not satisfy Vietnam’s permit rules; altered plastic cards with a changed class or date; and borrowed licences where the photo does not match the rider. None of these survives a checkpoint that checks, and checkpoints in Hanoi increasingly check electronically against the licence database — the officer’s terminal, not the officer’s eye, is the test a fake has to pass.
The legitimate routes are narrow but real: an A1 licence through the test, an exchange for residents with valid national licences, or a 1968 Vienna Convention IDP carried with its national licence. A rider eligible for one of those who rides on a fake instead has swapped a bounded, known cost for an unbounded one.
For visitors
If a website offers a licence with no test, no residence papers and no authority behind it, that is the product itself — the document is the offence. Check what your own licence plus an IDP already covers before paying anyone for paper.
Information, not legal advice. Verified against Decree 168/2024/NĐ-CP and Law 36/2024/QH15 on 2026-09-22.