The price a woman addicted to gambling had to pay: 21 years in and out of prison

42 years old, butPham Thi Phu, resident of Nghi Tan ward (Cua Lo town) has spent 21 years in and out of prison.

Half of his life he has been a thief, but until now, Phu still has no property in hand, not even a small home, when he has begun to step over the other side of life's slope.

The only asset she had was a child less than 6 months old. Phu innocently “bragged” that the child had saved her from a temporary postponement of a property theft trial.

Defendant Pham Thi Phu in court. Photo: Tran Vu

Before being tried by the People's Court of Nghe An province for property theft in mid-May 2019, Pham Thi Phu had 7 previous convictions related to this crime. In 2013, Phu was sentenced to 5 years in prison for the same crime. Not long after being released from prison, this woman's gambling blood was still burning. With no job, no money, Phu continued her old ways.

This time, Phu chose the middle of the night to go looking for his “prey”. At 0:30 a.m. on November 10, 2018, Phu took a taxi from his home to Vinh City, looking for motels and hotels to “practice his trade”.

After breaking into a hotel on Lenin Avenue, Phu went up to the 5th floor, sneaked into the foreign guest's room and took some foreign currency including: 500 USD, 700 EURO, 10,000 Thai Baht and 2.8 million VND. The total amount of money that Phu stole from the foreign man was nearly 40 million VND. To avoid suspicion, Phu divided the above amount of money and exchanged it into Vietnamese currency for many strangers at different locations.

The court asked the defendant: “What did you use the stolen money for?” Phu said, “to gamble.” The female judge said sternly: “Do you know that gambling is a violation of the law? Furthermore, you have been in prison many times, do you disregard the law?” At this point, Phu lowered his head and mumbled, “I stole to feed my children.”

However, the Court analyzed that the defendant committed the crime in 1998. After that, he repeatedly reoffended despite having to serve many different sentences. Therefore, the defendant's statement that he stole to feed his child is not entirely correct because his child is only 6 months old. What does the defendant think about his actions?

At this point, Phu admitted his mistake and asked the court for leniency so he could return to his child. “My child is still young, I am only afraid that during my time in prison, if no one takes care of him or teaches him, he will go astray,” Phu explained. The court said: If I thought about my child, why did I keep stealing like that? At this point, Phu mumbled: “I know I was wrong.”

Then Phu explained to the jury: “I have thought about it, when I have to serve my sentence, I will send my child to an orphanage. When I get out of prison, I will take my child back and find an honest job to support him.”

During the trial, the defendant occasionally looked back to find relatives. Photo: Tran Vu

In the hallway of the court, Phu said that the child was the “fruit” of a love affair with a man two zodiac years younger than him. The two met each other when Phu asked that man to drive him to work. Thinking that he was getting old, Phu decided to find a child to take care of him in his old age. And that child was born...

After knowing the story, the young man came to ask to acknowledge his son as his father, but Phu refused. “Simply because I didn’t want to be tied down, and I had multiple criminal convictions and no job, so I didn’t want to be a burden to them,” Phu said about his decision to raise his son alone.

When mentioning her child, this woman’s eyes lit up again. “For my child, I will change,” Phu promised.

For the crime of “Theft of property” with the aggravating circumstance of recidivism, the panel sentenced Pham Thi Phu to 2 years in prison. After hearing the sentence, Phu’s face looked a little pensive, “I have been to prison many times, I am used to it, but I think of my child. My mother is old, my brother has passed away, the child’s father is currently working abroad in Taiwan. I only feel sorry for the little child who has no one to take care of him...”.