Deeply in debt, the man fraudulently sold "phantom" land.
Having lost money investing online, Nam conceived the idea of defrauding a fellow countryman working abroad. Nam provided false information about non-existent land plots and their prices to swindle the victim out of more than half a billion dong.
On July 24th, the People's Court of Nghe An province opened a trial to hear the case against 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 from online investments leading to debt, Nam conceived the idea of committing fraud. His scheme involved posting advertisements for land for sale on social media to entice people to invest together for profit, but his real intention was to deceive them.
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 inquired about it. Nam then mentioned several plots of land and invited Mr. C. to contribute money as a deposit. To gain Mr. C.'s trust, Nam took Mr. C.'s wife to view three plots of land, but she didn't like any of them.
Later, Nam contacted Mr. C privately, inviting him to pool money to buy land as a deposit and then "speculate" on it. When Mr. C agreed, Nam provided false information about non-existent plots of land, their selling prices, and the deposit amounts, but in reality, no land was for sale as Nam claimed, and no land transactions took place.
In addition, Nam lied about mortgaging his land title to secure a loan from a credit fund, and then asked Mr. C. to send him money to retrieve the land title. Nam promised to mortgage the land title to the bank to borrow a larger sum of money to jointly invest in land with Mr. C. Trusting Nam's words, Mr. C. transferred money to him several times.
The investigating agency determined that from April 2021 to February 2022, Nam defrauded and misappropriated more than 520 million VND from Mr. C.
At the trial, the defendant admitted to the crime. The defendant stated that due to losses from online investments, he used the methods described in the indictment to defraud and take money from the victims. The defendant claimed that he is currently unable to repay the victims.
The victim, attending the trial, demanded that the defendant be severely punished criminally and that her money be returned.
The panel of judges determined that the defendant had taken advantage of the victim's trust to embezzle money, and therefore needed to be severely punished. After considering all aspects of the case, the court sentenced Tran Van Nam to 12 years in prison for "Fraudulent appropriation of property".