'Super scammer' couple embezzled 100 billion from tycoon

After half a year of additional investigation, Van and his wife appeared in court for luring many Saigon tycoons to buy houses at inflated prices and embezzling more than 100 billion VND.

On October 9, Ho Chi Minh City People's Court tried La Thi Thuy Van (61 years old) and her husband Lam Phuc Lam (59 years old) for the crime of Fraudulent appropriation of property.

The investigation results determined that nearly 20 years ago, Van was sentenced to 12 years in prison for using a house to defraud many people, taking dozens of taels of gold. During her sentence, she became friends with Lam, who was serving a 9-year prison sentence for defrauding the sale of construction materials, appropriating 200 million VND.

In 2003, Lam was released from prison early, found Van and became husband and wife. They rented a villa in Tan Binh district, established two companies - allegedly to show off their status in order to continue the old "trick" of fraud.

Van and his wife in court today. Photo: Hai Duyen.

From 2006 to 2008, Van and his wife used the company's legal entity to sign many real estate purchase and sale contracts, capital contribution contracts, loan contracts... from many people and then appropriated them.

According to the investigation, Van knew that the Ho Chi Minh City People's Committee planned to sell the villa complex at 64 Nguyen Van Troi (Phu Nhuan District, owned by the State) to 20 households who were renting it. Although the households had not been granted ownership certificates, Van and his wife still asked them to sell it to do the project. According to the agreement, Van and his wife had to pay the households nearly 3,300 taels of gold and 900 million VND.

Van then invited her.Duong Thi Bach DiepThe female tycoon did not agree to invest, so she switched to signing a mortgage contract, borrowing more than 2,500 taels of gold.

During this time Van bKnowing that many other real estate tycoons in Saigon were "hunting" to buy houses at discounted prices, Van and his wife brought the sale documents, signed capital contribution contracts with nearly ten people, and received a total of 180 billion VND and 5,000 taels of gold.

Using the excuse that the house purchase documents were not completed, Van and his wife only returned to the investors a portion of the money they had received, and appropriated the rest.

Discovering that Van had used this apartment to sell to many people at the same time, Ms. Diep and some people reported the incident. While the police were handling the case, Van returned the gold to the partners.

The investigation agency determined that Van and his wife "had signs of committing fraud and appropriation of property" in this case, but they had already paid back all the money they had appropriated, so the authorities did not prosecute.

Besides,Van and his wife also used the documents of the villa at 293A Nguyen Van Troi to cheat.of 4 other people more than 100 billion VND and 400 taels of gold.

Among them, the director of a real estate company in Binh Thanh was scammed out of more than 83 billion VND. He was also tricked by Van and his wife into depositing 230 taels of gold to buy a villa.After receiving the money, Van used the excuse that the homeowner wanted to stay for a few more months while looking for a new house, but in reality, it was to transfer the ownership to someone else.

In addition, the super-fraud couple also received a deposit of 8 billion VND from the director for another house in Binh Thanh district.The couple used the money they stole from him to pay off debts to previous people.

In March, Van and his wife were brought to trial by the Ho Chi Minh City People's Court. However, after a day of questioning, the panel of judges decided to return the case file for further investigation to clarify some details.

The trial is expected to last nine days.

According to VNE