Addicted to gambling, young woman defrauds tens of billions of dong.

The Nghe An Provincial People's Court recently held a first-instance trial to hear the case against defendant Le Thi Hien (born in 1991), residing in Dong Vinh ward, Vinh City, for the crime of fraud and appropriation of property.

Le Thi Hien was formerly the Head of the Nghe An representative office of Vietnam Study Abroad Joint Stock Company - SSE.

Between December 2022 and June 2023, Le Thi Hien repeatedly provided false information, such as soliciting money for financial verification services, depositing funds to open a study abroad company, and receiving money to send people abroad for labor export, but failed to fulfill these promises, thereby defrauding many people.

Among the victims, the couple Vo Minh T. (residing in Vinh City) were the ones who were defrauded the most by Hien. Hien persuaded Mr. T. to invest in a joint business providing financial proof services for clients needing assistance with travel, studying abroad, or overseas employment.

To gain Mr. T.'s trust, Hien created a Zalo account named "My Tour Visa" to impersonate him and obtained images and information from the Zalo account of Ms. Tran Huyen My (residing in Hanoi and currently working at a company that sends people abroad).

Subsequently, Hien used the Zalo app "My Tour Visa" to send messages to her frequently used Zalo account, then took screenshots of these messages and sent them to Mr. T. to prove that she was doing business with Ms. My. Because he trusted her, Mr. T. transferred over 31 billion VND to Hien on multiple occasions.

However, during this process, Mr. and Mrs. T. withdrew over 19 billion VND. In addition, Mr. T. also received over 2.6 billion VND in profits from Hien. Thus, the total amount Hien defrauded Mr. and Mrs. T. was over 9.3 billion VND.

For those who wanted to travel to or work in South Korea, after receiving the money, Hien spent it all without completing any procedures for them.

Investigators determined that the total amount of money Hien had embezzled from the victims was over 14.5 billion VND.

At the trial, the defendant admitted to the crime. The defendant stated that the money obtained through fraud had been spent and transferred to an account provided by a man named Hoang (whose identity and background are unknown) for online gambling on social media.

The victims who attended the trial demanded that the defendant return the money to them.

Considering the severity of the crime in this case, the defendant committed an exceptionally serious offense. The aggravating circumstances include committing the crime two or more times and defrauding a large sum of money. Therefore, the court sentenced Le Thi Hien to life imprisonment for the crime of fraud and appropriation of property.