Female director 'boasts' she can get suspended sentence, change land use purpose in Nghe An
Pham Thi Van provided false information, boasted of her "wide acquaintances" to trick people into "running a suspended sentence" and converting land use purposes, thereby appropriating nearly 4.3 billion VND.
Nghe An Provincial People's Court has just opened the first instance trial of defendant Pham Thi Van (born 1975), residing in Khuong Thuong ward, Dong Da district, Hanoi city, for the crime of "Fraudulent appropriation of property”.
According to the case file, Pham Thi Van is the Director of Tam Duc Real Estate Trading Construction Company. Due to needing money to pay off debts and for personal expenses, this female director provided false information to defraud many people.
Van's trick was to introduce himself as having many connections, being able to "get a suspended sentence" and get a change in land use purpose to defraud victims in Hanoi and Nghe An.
Specifically, at the end of 2019, Ms. Le Thi Hong V. (born in 1972, residing in Hoan Kiem District, Hanoi) had her daughter arrested for illegal drug trafficking. Because she wanted to find someone to help her daughter get a lighter sentence, she contacted Van through some people. Pham Thi Van promised to be able to "run" a suspended sentence for a cost of 500 million VND, if she could not "run" the sentence, she would refund the money.
Trusting her, Ms. V. transferred the full 500 million VND to Van many times. After receiving the full amount, Van told Ms. V. "If you want to process the case quickly, you have to give me another 100 million VND" and Ms. V. gave Van more money.
However, Ms. V.'s daughter was later sentenced to 7 years in prison for illegal drug trafficking. Knowing she had been deceived, Ms. V. filed a complaint against Van with the police.
In addition, Pham Thi Van also committed fraud in changing the land use purpose to appropriate money from Ms. Truong Thi Ng. (residing in Nghia Thanh commune, Nghia Dan district, Nghe An).
Accordingly, in early 2022, because of the need to change the land use purpose, from production forest land to residential land, Ms. Ng. contacted Van when someone introduced her. Van said that if she wanted to do the land use conversion procedure, she would have to pay for it herself and the procedure fee was 5 billion VND, but she would get a discount of 500 million VND.
After that, Ms. Ng. transferred nearly 3.7 billion VND to Van. After receiving the money, Van did not do as promised but used it all to pay off debts and personal expenses. In April 2023, when she realized she had been scammed, Ms. Ng. asked for the money back, but Pham Thi Van returned 1.6 billion VND.
The investigation agency determined that the total amount of money that Pham Thi Van appropriated from the victims was nearly 4.3 billion VND.
At the trial, the defendant admitted his crime and expressed remorse. The victim attending the trial requested the panel of judges to severely punish the defendant.
For the crime of Fraudulent appropriation of property, defendant Pham Thi Van was sentenced to 17 years in prison by the People's Court.