Transgender girl 'plays' many roles to defraud a woman in Nghe An of more than 1.5 billion VND

On the morning of June 11, Nghe An Provincial People's Court opened a first-instance criminal trial of defendant Pham Thi Phuong Loan (born 1990), residing in Vu Doai commune, Vu Thu district (Thai Binh) for the crime of Fraud and property appropriation.

In 2012, after graduating from Hanoi University of Science and Technology, Loan moved to the southern provinces to live and work, then underwent plastic surgery to change her appearance from female to male. To hide her identity, Loan changed her name to Nguyen Van Thu (born in 1980, residing in Vu Ninh City, Bac Ninh).

In January 2016, Ms. Nguyen Thanh Be (residing in Quang Binh province) lost her identity papers and asked Loan to post an ad to find her. Later, someone returned Ms. Be's papers to Loan. However, Ms. Be returned to her hometown and did not come to collect her identity papers from Loan. Because she wanted to have a bank account for transactions, Loan removed the photo from Ms. Be's identity card and pasted her own photo on it to register an account at Eximbank.

Pham Thi Phuong Loan. Photo: document

With the intention of defrauding, in October 2017, Loan made friends with Ms. Nguyen Thi Van (born in 1985, residing in Nghi Xuan commune, Nghi Loc district, Nghe An) through a Facebook account. Knowing that Ms. Van was looking for a woman currently in Korea to get back the bail money for her husband to escape to Korea, Loan introduced herself as Cao Canh Khanh and offered to help Ms. Van.

In order to gain Ms. Van's trust, Loan continued to impersonate Ngo Duc Minh (born in 1980, residing in Bac Ninh province), then used the name Khanh to introduce Minh as someone working at the Korean embassy who could intervene to get back half of the money lost at the travel company for Ms. Van. After that, Loan alone played many roles including Khanh and Minh to ask Ms. Van to transfer money with the reason that she had found Anh's address.

To gain Van’s trust, Loan, under the name of Minh, arranged to meet Van in Hanoi. At the same time, she instructed Van to borrow money from Minh to transfer to Khanh. Because she heard Loan say that Khanh had received money from Minh, Van transferred 60 million VND to pay Loan. From a stranger, Loan not only took the money but also became Van’s “benefactor”.

After the incident, Loan used the name Ngo Duc Minh to communicate and become close to Ms. Van. In early December 2017, knowing that Ms. Van was looking for someone to do the tourist procedures in Korea, Loan continued to have the intention of defrauding and appropriating her property. Using the same trick as before, Loan used the name Khanh, introducing Ms. Be (Loan herself pretending to be) who was capable of doing the procedures for tourists in Korea for Ms. Van.

After that, Loan went to buy a phone, along with a SIM card, and then, under the name of Khanh, sent the phone number to Ms. Van to contact. Because Loan had once asked Ms. Van to transfer money to Be's account, when hearing Loan (under the name of Khanh) introduce herself like that, Ms. Van believed that Ms. Be was real, so she called and texted Loan to do the procedures for 16 people traveling to Korea. These were people who all resided in Nghe An, they paid Van to do the procedures for them to travel to Korea. During the conversation with Ms. Van, Loan deliberately used many different voices so that she would not recognize that it was the same person.

After that, Loan (in the name of Be) deceived Ms. Van that she was capable of taking people to travel to Korea and asked her to deposit money in advance. Believing that Ms. Be was real and capable of completing procedures to travel to Korea, on December 8 and 9, 2017, Ms. Van transferred more than 363 million VND.

The trial of Pham Thi Phuong Loan was adjourned due to the absence of the victim. Photo: Tran Vu

Next, Loan (under the name of Be) lied and asked Ms. Van to bring 16 sets of documents to Hanoi. However, fearing that her identity would be revealed, Loan did not show up, but asked a friend to get the documents for her. After that, Loan did not submit the 16 sets of documents to any company that is responsible for processing travel procedures in Korea. Also during this time, there were 2 people who did not intend to travel to Korea anymore, so Loan forced Ms. Van to pay 1,000 USD with the reason of withdrawing the documents.

On December 18, 2017, although she did not submit documents to travel agencies in Korea, Loan tricked Ms. Van into having visas for several people and then asked her to pay more than 1.1 billion VND. Trusting her, Ms. Van followed Loan's instructions. On the same day, Ms. Van transferred to Loan 45 million VND as a penalty for withdrawing the documents of 2 people.

By December 19, after appropriating more than 1.5 billion VND from Ms. Van, Loan completely cut off contact. Realizing that she had been scammed, Ms. Van filed a complaint with the authorities about Loan's fraudulent behavior. The authorities then investigated and prosecuted Pham Thi Phuong Loan for fraud and property appropriation.

At today's trial, because the victim Nguyen Thi Van was not present, in order to ensure the rights of the victims, as well as to ensure the case is tried in accordance with the law, the court decided to temporarily postpone the trial of Pham Thi Phuong Loan.