IT bachelor impersonates Vietcombank employee to commit fraud

On March 26, Nghe An Provincial People's Court opened a first-instance criminal trial of defendant Bui Huu Thang (born 1986), residing in Trung Do ward, Vinh city, for two crimes of "Fraudulent appropriation of property" and "Forgery of documents of agencies and organizations; crime of using forged documents of agencies and organizations".

Bui Huu Thang graduated from university with a major in Information Technology. After graduating, Thang wanted to apply for a job at the Joint Stock Commercial Bank for Foreign Trade of Vietnam (Vietcombank), so he gave 300 million VND to a man named Nguyen Khac Tung. However, according to Thang's testimony, Tung could not find a job for himself.

From November 2011 to 2018, because he wanted to have money to spend, Thang came up with the idea of ​​defrauding and appropriating other people's property. Thang introduced himself as an employee of Vietcombank Nghe An Branch, providing information that this bank was having a capital mobilization program specifically for bank employees to deposit savings with high interest rates or to apply for jobs in state agencies.

Defendant Bui Huu Thang impersonated a bank employee and committed fraud.

Because of trust, many people in Nghe An and Ha Tinh gave money to Thang. In the process of committing the appropriation, Thang made and used fake documents of agencies and organizations to create trust for the victims.

By this trick, Thang defrauded and appropriated the property of 9 people with the amount of nearly 11 billion VND.

Among the victims, Ms. Nguyen Thi L. (living in Vinh City) was defrauded the most amount of money by Thang. From 2011 to 2017, Ms. L. gave Thang a total of 3.8 billion VND with the purpose of depositing in the bank to get high interest rates. To avoid suspicion, Thang used 6 fake documents from the bank to show Ms. L. such as: Capital mobilization minutes; notice of contract extension; payment appointment paper...

When Ms. L. requested to withdraw the entire amount, Thang demanded that she pay a withdrawal fee. Therefore, Ms. L. repeatedly gave Thang nearly 1.4 billion VND in fees. Thus, the total amount of money Thang appropriated from Ms. L. was nearly 5.2 billion VND.

In court, the defendant admitted to receiving money from the victims. However, Thang said he gave all the money to a man named Nguyen Khac Tung. However, the defendant still does not know where this person is.

Regarding this issue, the Investigation Agency of Nghe An Province Police conducted verification at Vietcombank Vietnam and found that up to now, this bank has never had an employee named Nguyen Khac Tung as Thang stated.

Considering Thang’s act of fraud and appropriation of property to be particularly serious, the panel sentenced Bui Huu Thang to life in prison. The defendant was required to return the entire amount of money he had defrauded from the victims.