'Monster woman' impersonates Deputy Editor-in-Chief, defrauds and appropriates more than 12 billion VND

On September 20, Nghe An Provincial People's Court opened a trial of defendant Nguyen Thi Van Anh (born 1976), residing in Dien Hanh commune, Dien Chau district, for the crimes of "Fraudulent appropriation of property" and "Using fake seals of agencies and organizations".

According to the indictment, in early 2021, due to needing money for personal expenses, Van Anh hired a person (unknown background and address) online to make a fake press card and a fake civil servant inspection card with her name and photo.

After having a fake press card, Van Anh showed it to many people and introduced herself as Deputy Editor-in-Chief of the electronic information portal of the Central region of a major newspaper, having wide relationships with departments, branches and sectors in Nghe An and the Central region, so she could change the land purpose, from agricultural land to residential land.

To gain the trust of the victims, Van Anh provided information that she had converted many agricultural plots of land into rural residential land; Or when she saw that the victims wanted to convert a large plot of land but did not have enough money, Van Anh asked to buy it together and contribute to the cost of converting that plot of land.

When the victims were completely convinced, Van Anh gave them the conversion fee and the deposit amount. Then, this subject hired someone to make 28 fake Land Use Rights Certificates to deliver to the victims and received the remaining amount of money as previously agreed.

With the above trick, from May 2021 to April 2022, Van Anh appropriated a total of more than 12.5 billion VND from 5 victims. This subject's behavior was exposed at the end of April 2022.

At the trial, the defendant confessed to the crime as charged in the indictment. The defendant admitted to forging press cards and then defrauding many people. When the victims trusted him, the defendant asked someone to forge “red covers” to give to them.

Regarding the embezzled money, the defendant stated that he used it to buy real estate, buy cars, buy gold, have cosmetic surgery and spend it all on personal expenses.

Before the trial took place, the defendant had compensated the victims a total of more than 5.5 billion VND.

Considering that in this case, the defendant has aggravating circumstances of committing the crime 2 times or more, but there are some mitigating circumstances such as honestly confessing, repenting, partially compensating for the damage...

Therefore, the People's Court sentenced Nguyen Thi Van Anh to 17 years in prison for "Fraudulent appropriation of property" and 3 years in prison for "Using fake documents and seals of agencies and organizations"; The total sentence is 20 years in prison.