A girl claiming to be an official of the provincial Department of Home Affairs, scammed people out of billions of dong in job offers.

On September 22, Nghe An Provincial People's Court opened a first-instance criminal trial of Mac Thi Le Quyen (born in 1984, from Ta Ca commune, Ky Son district), registered permanent residence in Nghi Kim commune, Vinh city, for the crime of "Fraudulent appropriation of property”.

According to the investigation agency's documents, due to the need for money to pay off debts and personal expenses, between 2015 and 2019, although she did not have the authority, function, or duty to arrange jobs for others, Quyen introduced herself as working atDepartment of Home AffairsNghe An province. Not only that, Quyen also "bragged" about knowing leaders of the departments: Department of Health, Department of Education and Training of Nghe An province, so she could apply for jobs at hospitals, schools, and some other agencies and units to appropriate money from the victims.

Defendant Mac Thi Le Quyen in court. Photo: Tran Vu

Mac Thi Le Quyen committed fraud 20 times, appropriating a total of more than 3.4 billion VND from 20 victims. The victim who was defrauded the least amount of money was 60 million VND, and the victim who was defrauded the most was 330 million VND.

The common method that Quyen uses on her victims is to approach her “prey”. Then, she “exposes” that she works for the Department of Home Affairs and knows many provincial leaders who can help her find a job, then she gives them a price. When the job seeker agrees, Quyen asks for money and sets a time to receive the decision to go to work.

After the commitment period, Quyen continuously gave reasons to delay. Then, Quyen went online to search for a document with the signature of the recruiting unit, inserted the list of job applicants herself, and photocopied it to give to them. The job applicant did not discover Quyen's fraud until he brought the fake decision to the recruiting place and was shocked to realize that he had been scammed.

The investigation agency determined that in order to commit the fraud, Mac Thi Le Quyen created a list of successful candidates and decisions to accept jobs of a number of people with the signatures and seals of the organization. However, the seals and documents Quyen used from the organization were printed by Quyen herself, who accessed social networking sites to search for and print them, then cut and pasted them onto the lists and decisions of successful candidates and photocopied them to give to the victims. Quyen's actions were a trick to make the victims trust her, hand over money and then appropriate it, so there is no basis to prosecute Quyen for the crime of using the seals of the organization.

Defendant Mac Thi Le Quyen (red shirt) was sentenced to 20 years in prison. Photo: Tran Vu

In court, the defendant stated that he had spent all the money he had embezzled from the victims for personal use. The victims attending the court requested that the defendant return all the money and requested strict punishment.

The panel of judges determined that the defendant's repeated actions were an aggravating circumstance in the case, so they sentenced Mac Thi Le Quyen to 20 years in prison for fraud and appropriation of property (higher than the prosecutor's proposal of 9 to 10 years in prison).