8 years in prison for the man who broke into his neighbor's house to steal money and gold

On May 15, Nghe An Provincial People's Court opened the first instance trial of defendant Pham Huy Hoang (born 1996), residing in Quang Tien ward, Thai Hoa town, for the crime of "Theft of property".

According to the case file, at around 2:00 a.m. on August 29, 2022, Hoang walked from the motel to his house and found the door locked. Therefore, Hoang climbed a tree to get into the house.

At this time, Hoang looked over to the pharmacy of his neighbor, Ms. Nguyen Thi Thanh Th. (born in 1977), and discovered that the door was unlocked, so he had the intention of stealing property.

Defendant Pham Huy Hoang was sentenced to 8 years in prison. Photo: Tran Vu

Hoang walked from the air conditioner on the second floor of his house to Ms. Th's advertising board and then broke into the house. Once inside, Hoang went down to the first floor to rummage through the house, looking for property.

After taking 6 million VND from the bag, Hoang continued to observe and discovered a drawer at the foot of the stairs, so he opened it and took 364 million VND, 9 rings, 1 necklace and 14 pieces of gold, with a total value of more than 520 million VND. Hoang took all the above assets and escaped by the same route and then returned to the motel.

Hoang used the stolen money to pay off debts, spend on personal expenses, and transfer it to a bank account in his own name. Hoang hid the gold in his house.

On September 5, 2022, I realized that my behavior wasviolate the lawSo Hoang went to the police to surrender.

At the trial, the defendant admitted to the crime. Hoang said that because of debt and seeing that his neighbor's house was not locked, he became greedy and therefore committed the act of stealing gold and money.

After the incident, the defendant influenced the family to return all the money and gold to the victim. The victim did not attend court but submitted a petition to reduce the defendant's sentence.

The panel of judges determined that in this case, the defendant had many mitigating circumstances such as honestly confessing, having remedied the consequences for the victim, having a family with revolutionary contributions, having saved a drowning person... However, the defendant also had aggravating circumstances such as recidivism (Hoang was previously sentenced to 15 months in prison for "Illegal possession of narcotics"). Therefore, the court sentenced Pham Huy Hoang to 8 years in prison for "Theft of property".