Director of installing chip to cheat on petrol gets prison sentence

(Baonghean.vn)- After 5 days of deliberation, on the morning of January 26, Nghe An Provincial People's Court issued a final verdict against the defendants in the case of illegally accessing other people's digital devices and defrauding customers.

The defendants in the dock.

According to the indictment, Tran Le Duc (born in 1979, residing in Tay Ho district, Hanoi), is the director of Vietnam Digital Electronic System Company Limited, specializing in installing, repairing and consulting for gas stations on electronic parts. Duc used integrated circuits (IC programs) to control and measure in gas pumps of SEEN Digital Company and then installed his own control program to create and replace the IC program at gas pumps manufactured by SEEN Digital Company.

With this method, Duc changes the measurement accuracy of electronic fuel pumps by 1%-10% (depending on the store owner's request to reduce the customer's profit).

Duc produced and sold 114 of these program ICs to Mach Loc Toai, Nguyen Anh Tuan (born in 1977, residing in Quynh Luu district), and Bui The Ai (born in 1969, residing in Vinh city). Afterwards, Anh Tuan, The Ai, Nguyen Son Hai (born in 1973, residing in Dien Chau, Nghe An), and Pham Dinh Tuan (born in 1973, residing in Vinh city) - all four of whom are petrol pump repairmen - used 16 ICs to install at 16 petrol pumps of 11 stores in Nghe An.

From the above actions, Duc illegally profited 17 million VND, Dinh Tuan illegally profited 7.5 million VND, Ai illegally profited 16 million VND, Hai illegally profited 15.4 million VND, Anh Tuan illegally profited 1.6 million VND. Nguyen Anh The - the workshop manager of SEEN Technical Joint Stock Company, worked with Duc for a while, helping Duc test the accuracy of the program ICs manufactured by Duc. Because Duc did not take back the 2 program ICs that The had checked, The sold these ICs to Nguyen Son Hai. Nguyen Anh The was identified as an accomplice who assisted Duc and Hai, illegally profiting 4 million VND.

The defendants Duc, Ai, Hai, Dinh Tuan, Anh Tuan, and Anh The were prosecuted for illegally accessing other people's digital devices.

By replacing the German-made program IC, Bang Quoc Huy reduced the amount of gasoline sold to customers by more than 173 million VND. Similarly, Ho Xuan Ha reduced the amount of gasoline sold to customers by more than 56 million VND. These two defendants were prosecuted for defrauding customers.

In this case, the authorities determined that there were 9 other gas stations using the program IC created by Tran Le Duc to fraudulently sell gas to customers, but the amount of fraud was not enough to warrant criminal prosecution.

Differentiating the roles of each defendant, the panel sentenced Tran Le Duc to 24 months in prison, with an additional fine of 30 million VND; Nguyen Anh Tuan to 18 months in prison with a suspended sentence, with an additional fine of 20 million VND; Nguyen Son Hai to 24 months in prison with a suspended sentence, with an additional fine of 40 million VND; Bui The Ai to 18 months in prison with a suspended sentence, with an additional fine of 30 million VND; Pham Dinh Tuan to 12 months in prison with a suspended sentence, with an additional fine of 10 million VND; Nguyen Anh The was fined 30 million VND for illegally accessing another person's digital device.

Defendant Bành Quốc Huy was sentenced to 9 months in prison and an additional fine of 40 million VND; Hồ Xuân Hà was sentenced to 7 months in prison with a suspended sentence and an additional fine of 30 million VND for defrauding customers.

Khang Hoa