'Luring' trick, deceiving gullible people who want to go to Korea to work

On August 1, the Hanoi People's Court sentenced defendant Le Quy Cuong (born 1994, in Thanh Hoa) to 7 years in prison for "Fraudulent appropriation of property".

According to the indictment, Cuong is a freelance worker, has no function, and is not licensed to send people to work abroad.

However, when seeing many people wanting to work abroad or travel to Korea, the defendant had the idea of ​​defrauding and appropriating money from gullible people.

Around May 2020, Cuong used the Facebook account "Cuong Le" to post information looking for people who wanted to work in Korea and travel without a visa to Jeju Island, Korea.

When some people wanted to contact him, Cuong asked them to transfer money to buy plane tickets and apply for visas. When the victims transferred money, the defendant appropriated it for personal expenses without contacting any agency, organization or individual to complete the procedures for them to go to Korea.

By the above tricks, the defendant appropriated more than 747 million VND from 10 victims.

According to Cuong’s testimony, he knew a woman named Duong Anh who lived in Korea and was able to send people to work in Korea for a fee of 3,500 USD. If the defendant successfully introduced a person to work in Korea, he would receive a commission of 500 USD.

Cuong also said he knew a man named Kangcho (Korean nationality) living in Vietnam. This man said he could take Vietnamese people on a trip to Jeju Island, South Korea for $2,500. If Cuong could introduce someone who wanted to go to Korea, he would receive a commission of $500.

After receiving money from the victims, the defendant transferred the money to the above two individuals. Cuong kept all the commission money for personal expenses.

However, Cuong could not provide documents or evidence to prove the above statement. Then, the defendant changed his statement, saying that he did not know the identities of the two people above, did not transfer money to them but used the money he had appropriated from the victims to play virtual currency, bet online and for personal expenses.

The investigation agency clarified that Cuong used the money he appropriated from the victims to play virtual money on an application called TCBS and bet online on the W88 website.

The investigation agency allowed Cuong to log into his online gambling account, but he said he could not remember his account and password to log into the TCBS website, so the investigation agency could not extract data and had no basis to prosecute the defendant for gambling.

In connection with the case, the Investigation Police have temporarily seized more than 13.1 billion VND in bank accounts. The banks have provided account opening documents and identified the identity and background of the account holders.

The Investigation Police Department has coordinated with Department C06 - Ministry of Public Security to verify the ID numbers and citizen identification cards used to register to open accounts, and at the same time coordinated with the Administrative Management Department of the Public Security of the provinces of Quang Ninh, Tuyen Quang, Quang Binh, Lang Son, Tien Giang, Ninh Binh, and Ho Chi Minh City.

The Investigation Police Department has decided to process the evidence and return more than 300 million VND to the two victims. The remaining amount is currently being held in bank accounts.