Land registration office staff swindled billions

The People's Court of Nghe An province has just opened a trial of defendant Nguyen Quang Truong (30 years old), residing in Dong Hop commune, Quy Hop district (Nghe An) for 2 crimes of "Abuse of position and power to appropriate property” and “Fraudulent appropriation of property”.

Nguyen Quang Truong is a contract employee at the Land Engineering Department, Quy Hop District Land Registration Office Branch from April 1, 2021 to October 6, 2022. Truong's task is to assist in extracting and supplementing cadastral measurements of land plots, correcting cadastral records and performing other tasks assigned by the branch director.

Since April 2021, the School has been asked by many people in Dong Hop commune and some neighboring communes to help with land procedures such as: issuing and exchanging land use right certificates, changing land use purposes, dividing plots, etc. After completing the procedures and being granted a "red book", the people "compensated" the School from 5 to 10 million VND.

In September 2021, due to losses in playing virtual currency online, Truong came up with the idea of ​​​​fraud. Truong's method was to receive money from people and then promise to do land-related procedures. However, after receiving the money, this subject used it to play "sic bo" online.

The investigation agency determined that from November 2021 to October 6, 2022, Nguyen Quang Truong abused his job to receive money to make documents, procedures for land division, red book issuance, land use conversion... appropriating more than 2.8 billion VND from 39 people.

On October 6, 2022, the Nghe An Provincial Land Registration Office terminated the employment contract with Truong. However, Truong concealed the fact that he had quit his job to receive money to complete land procedures, defrauded 20 people, and appropriated nearly 1.1 billion VND. Thus, the total amount of money Truong defrauded and appropriated from the victims was nearly 4 billion VND.

At the trial, the defendant admitted to committing crimes against most of the victims. As for the four victims, the defendant said that he used part of the money to make a “red book”, and the other part was borrowed with handwritten papers to trade land, not fraud.

However, these victims stated that they did not know the defendant, so they did not lend them money. The fact that the defendant completed land procedures but wrote a loan agreement after receiving the money was a fraudulent tactic of the defendant. The victims asked the defendant to return the money to them.

The defendant stated that he is currently unable to pay his debt. In his final statement before the court deliberated, the defendant apologized to his former agency, his relatives and the victims.

After a comprehensive review of the case, the People's Court sentenced Nguyen Quang Truong to a total of 25 years in prison for the two crimes of "Abuse of position and power to appropriate property" and "Fraudulent appropriation of property".