Prosecution of defendant impersonating health inspector to commit fraud
Claiming to be Phan Thanh Hai - an inspector of the Department of Health, Nguyen Van Tam used the trick of calling people with bone and joint diseases, asking about their health and then inviting them to buy medicine to cheat many people and appropriated more than 1 billion VND.
On the evening of March 25, Hanoi City Police announced that they had prosecuted and detained Nguyen Van Tam (born in 1999, in Y Yen, Nam Dinh, temporarily residing in Tay Mo ward, Nam Tu Liem district, Hanoi) to investigate the act of fraud and appropriation of property.
Police determined that Tam often called people with bone and joint diseases and claimed to be Phan Thanh Hai - Inspector of the Department of Health, asking about the patients' health and the medications they used.
Then, this impersonator offered to buy the medicine "Calcium", "Phuc Cot Don" from "Long Huong Pagoda" or "Health Support Center" for 1 - 3 million VND/prescription (1 - 3 boxes of medicine), along with a "Warranty Card".
The characteristic of this card is that the front (yellow) has the following content: “Warranty card for Vietnamese people’s health”. 50 million VND refund if the customer discovers harmful substances in the product. The back (white) has the following content: Customer information, phone number.
Tam commits to using high-dose and specialized medicine to help cure and prevent recurrence, improve over 90% of the disease (if not, the pharmacy will provide free support until the disease is completely cured), and refund up to 80% of the treatment cost if the disease does not improve.
The person impersonating a Health Department inspector delivered medicine to the patient through EMS Vietnam or Viettel Post services, asking the delivery staff to collect the money on his behalf.
Next, the subject tricked the patient into participating in a program to create a book to support free medical examinations at central hospitals or to receive one-time support with an amount ranging from several tens of millions to several hundreds of millions of dong.
But Tam also set a condition that the book registration fee or value added tax must be paid into the bank account. The police determined that Tam had defrauded and appropriated more than 1 billion VND from many people.
