Former flight attendant gets 11 years in prison for gold smuggling

Ngoc Anh hid billions of gold bars under the plane seat to take to Korea to sell for profit.

» Female flight attendant arrested for illegally transporting 80 taels of gold

The first instance verdict on July 19 of the Hanoi People's Court determined that Hoang Thi Ngoc Anh (35 years old), while temporarily stopping her job as a flight attendant, realized that the price of gold in Korea was much higher than in Vietnam, so she and her husband organized a business.

Ngoc Anh and her husband (in black) with Nhuan at the trial.

On July 26, 2016, Ngoc Anh and his wife bought more than 80 gold bars for more than 2.8 billion VND, and had them crafted into 4 rectangular pieces. The gold pieces were wrapped together in a package with magnets attached.

Ngoc Anh contacted Pham Duy Nhuan, a technical staff at Noi Bai airport, to hire him to carry the gold package onto the plane for 2 million VND. On July 27, 2016, even though it was not his shift, Nhuan still found an excuse to go through security, bring the gold package onto the plane and attach it to the seat number where Ngoc Anh and her husband would sit on the flight to Korea that day. Before the plane took off, the police discovered this illegal gold transport.

According to authorities, using the above trick, a month before being arrested, Ngoc Anh and her husband successfully smuggled 20 taels of gold, worth 720 million VND, to South Korea, also with the help of Nhuan.

At the trial, the panel of judges concluded that Ngoc Anh and his wife had smuggled more than 3kg of gold, with a total value of more than 2.9 billion VND. The court sentenced Ngoc Anh to 11 years in prison, Sang to 10 years, and Nhuan to 9 years for smuggling./.

According to VNE