Warehouse keeper 'stuffed' bricks into thousands of milk crates

On January 18, the Hanoi People's Court opened a first-instance criminal trial of defendant Nguyen Huy Hoang (42 years old, residing in Thanh Xa commune, district), prosecuted for the crime of abuse of trust to appropriate property.

According to the indictment of the Hanoi People's Procuracy, in August 2013, Hoang was assigned by Mesa Service and Trading Company Limited (abbreviated as Mesa Company), headquartered in Hai Ba Trung District, Hanoi, to manage two warehouses, one in Hoang Mai District (Hanoi) and one in My Hao District (Hung Yen).

Defendant Hoang at trial.

Hoang's daily task is to manage the receipt and export of goods (mainly canned milk), according to the bills of lading and documents of Mesa Company. According to regulations, Hoang is only allowed to export goods after receiving the warehouse delivery note from the enterprise. However, taking advantage of the warehouse management function assigned by the company, in mid-2014, Hoang brought a series of milk samples of the enterprise to sell to many agents in Hanoi at a price cheaper than the normal selling price.

Accordingly, whenever he ran out of money for personal expenses or when the agent called for goods, Hoang hired a person who specialized in driving a truck to transport milk from Mesa Company to sell.

To avoid detection when the company took inventory, Hoang used bricks to place the “emptied” milk crates and used the remaining milk crates to surround them. When the amount of milk in the warehouse was too low to camouflage with the broken bricks, Hoang called some agents to buy their goods and put them in the warehouse. When the inventory was completed, the subject calmly hired people to transport the company’s milk and sell it as his own.

Using this method, from mid-2014 to the end of 2015, Hoang “stolen” 2,411 cartons of various types of milk from Mesa Company in both warehouses, equivalent to more than 1.7 billion VND. The act of abusing trust to appropriate property by the subject was only discovered on December 2, 2015, when Mesa Company conducted a general inventory of goods and counted each carton of milk in the warehouses.

Explaining the motive for the crime, Hoang said that he often played the lottery with a woman in Hoang Van Thu Industrial Park, Hoang Mai District, leading to losses and debt. Therefore, when the lottery house pressured him to pay his debt, Hoang took the risk.

At the end of the trial, the panel sentenced Hoang to 13 years in prison for the crime charged. In addition to the prison sentence, the panel also ordered the defendant to pay more than VND 1.6 billion in compensation to the civil plaintiff.

According to CAND