In debt, the man swindled and sold 'ghost' land
After losing money investing online, Nam came up with the idea of defrauding his fellow countryman working abroad. Nam provided false information about non-existent land plots, selling prices, etc. to steal more than half a billion VND from the victim.
On July 24, Nghe An Provincial People's Court opened a trial for defendant Tran Van Nam (40 years old), residing in Quynh Hau commune, Quynh Luu district, for the crime of "Fraudulent appropriation of property".
According to the indictment, in March 2021, due to losses in online investments leading to debt, Nam came up with the idea of fraud. The method Nam carried out was to post articles about land for sale on social networks to invite people to invest together to make a profit, but the purpose was to defraud.
At this time, Mr. Le Minh C. (40 years old, residing in Quynh Hau commune) who was working in Singapore read the information Nam posted and asked. At this time, Nam said he had some plots of land and invited Mr. C. to contribute money to deposit the land. To create trust, Nam took Mr. C.'s wife to see 3 plots of land but she did not like any of them.
Afterwards, Nam contacted Mr. C. privately to invite them to contribute money to buy land and then “surf”. When Mr. C. agreed, Nam gave false information about the non-existent plots of land, the selling price, the deposit amount, but in reality there was no plot of land for sale as Nam said, there was no land sale transaction.
In addition, Nam also lied about the fact that his house's land title was being mortgaged to borrow money from a credit union, and then asked Mr. C. to deposit money to withdraw the "red title". Nam promised to mortgage the red title to the bank to borrow a larger amount of money to invest in land with Mr. C. Trusting Nam's words, Mr. C. transferred money to this subject many times.
The investigation agency determined that from April 2021 to February 2022, Nam defrauded and appropriated more than 520 million VND from Mr. C.
At the trial, the defendant admitted to the crime. The defendant stated that due to losses in online investments, he used the methods as stated in the indictment to defraud and take the victim’s money. The defendant stated that he is currently unable to repay the debt to the victim.
The victim attended the court and requested that the defendant be strictly punished criminally and that he be returned his money.
The panel of judges determined that the defendant had taken advantage of the victim's trust to appropriate money and therefore needed to be severely punished. Considering the case as a whole, the court sentenced Tran Van Nam to 12 years in prison for "fraudulent appropriation of property".
