Using deceitful tricks to appropriate billions of dong when playing eight-way poker

Nghe An Provincial People's Court has just opened a trial of defendant Dao Thi Duyen (born 1987), residing in Hung Phuc ward, Vinh city, for the crime of "Fraudulent appropriation of property".

The case file shows that Dao Thi Duyen participated in the "ward" from the end of 2020 to the beginning of June 2021, led by Vo Thi Thu Hien, residing in Vinh City.

According to Hien's rules, when the ward comes, the ward members must compete in the ward, and whoever competes higher will receive money. Before competing in the ward, the players must pay the ward fee by transferring money to Hien's bank account via Internet Banking application.

During the period from July 2021 to September 2021, knowing that Ms. Hien opened many gambling clubs, with many participants, and the amount of money transferred in a day was so large that it was difficult to control, Duyen came up with the idea of ​​using fake bank transfer images (also known as fake bills) on the Internet Banking application to appropriate gambling money.

Duyen used the trick of installing the bank's money transfer service application on her phone. Then, she used her account to transfer the exact amount of money to another bank account of hers. The purpose was to have the bank send a text message notifying her that the money had been deducted from her account, matching the amount of money to the previous account.

Then, Duyen took a screenshot of the phone screen with a notification that the money had been transferred and filled in Ms. Hien's account information, but did not actually make the transfer.

After creating a fake image using the above trick, Duyen sent it to the ward group to trick Ms. Hien into paying the ward fee. Trusting her, and receiving many messages a day, Ms. Hien did not suspect anything and thought that Duyen had paid the ward fee.

Defendant Dao Thi Duyen. Photo: Tran Vu

On September 24, 2021, Ms. Hien received 7 pictures of the money transfer to pay the ward fee from Duyen. Seeing that Duyen sent the money early, Ms. Hien checked to see if the money had entered her account but did not see the money. Hien called to ask, but Duyen said it was a bank error.

Suspecting something was wrong, Ms. Hien checked all the photos that Duyen had paid to the ward, and also went to the bank to print out the account statement to compare, only to discover that the photos Duyen had previously transferred did not match the bank statement. When questioned, Duyen admitted that the photos were fake and promised to pay back the money.

During the investigation, the authorities determined that, by fraudulent means, from June 2 to September 24, 2021, Dao Thi Duyen used fake bills to pay to 46 wards, appropriating 3.6 billion VND from Ms. Hien.

At the trial, the defendant confessed and admitted his actions. The defendant stated that because he saw that Ms. Hien was the owner of many businesses and that the number of money transfer messages in a day was too much to control, he came up with the idea of ​​making fake bills to defraud and appropriate property.

Before the trial took place, the defendant influenced the victim's family to voluntarily compensate more than 2.1 billion VND.

The panel of judges determined that the defendant's behavior was dangerous to society. The defendant had a bad personal history and had been administratively punished many times for gambling but refused to change himself.

Considering the case as a whole, the People's Court sentenced the defendant Dao Thi Duyen to 12 years and 6 months in prison; the court ordered the defendant to compensate the remaining amount of more than 1.4 billion VND to the victim.