The long slide of a gambling addict

Sliding into sin

Le Xuan The (residing in Tang Thanh commune, Yen Thanh district) was born into a special family situation where no information about his father was known. Growing up under the care and education of his mother, from a young age, The showed his rebelliousness. He dropped out of school early and joined his friends in gambling. At first, it was just fun games, but then the young man got deeper into gambling. The price that The had to pay was a 3-month prison sentence, but with a suspended sentence for gambling at the age of 21.

After the probationary period ended, The was still passionate about gambling. Without a stable job, to have money to spend and meet his personal needs, The committed theft and was sentenced to 2 years in prison.

The list of bad “records” of The has not stopped when in 2021 he was identified as being involved in another gambling case. This time, The participated in gambling with a larger amount of money. Therefore, Le Xuan The was sentenced by the court to 3 years in prison for gambling. Due to the suspension of the sentence, The continued to live in the locality.

However, during this time, The continued to commit a series of other scams, appropriating billions of dong from many people. The method this guy used was to order fake land use right certificates, car registrations of other people, then pawn them, and appropriate money to spend.

Exposing the scam

The indictment shows that, in order to have money to spend, in May 2022, Le Xuan The went on social media to place a fake land use right certificate for the land he had sold to someone else. Then, The brought the fake "red book" to mortgage to an acquaintance in Xuan Thanh commune (Yen Thanh). Because of their acquaintance, this person was subjective and did not carefully check the legality of the documents. After exchanging and negotiating, this person agreed to hold The's "red book" for 200 million VND. The spent all of this money.

Three months later, Thế continued to use this method to defraud Ms. Nguyen Thi S. residing in Son Thanh commune, Yen Thanh district. Accordingly, before carrying out the fraud, Thế went online to order a fake land use right certificate for 3 million VND. When he had the fake "red book" in hand, in early August 2022, Thế contacted and told Ms. S. that he wanted to mortgage it to borrow 300 million VND. Because of their acquaintance, Ms. S. trusted the documents that Thế provided. To make the victim more confident, Thế wrote a land mortgage paper for Ms. S. Without any suspicion, after a short time, Ms. S. transferred the full 300 million VND to Thế.

In addition to that trick, The also committed fraud by renting a self-driving car and then going online to order a fake registration in his name. After obtaining the fake car registration, on July 19, 2022, The went to a reputable garage in Yen Thanh town to rent a car for 700,000 VND/day. The owner of this garage was also subjective and trusting, so he did not carefully check the documents and let The rent the car.

After nearly 2 months of use, The drove the car and brought the fake registration to a pawn shop, showed the fake registration to the pawn shop owner and lied that the car was his. After checking the documents, the pawn shop owner agreed to lend The 300 million VND.

Le Xuan The's fraud was exposed when one of the four victims discovered The's deception and filed a complaint with the police. The investigation agency determined that The had defrauded and appropriated 4 victims with a total amount of over 1.4 billion VND. With the above actions, Le Xuan The was prosecuted and brought to trial for 2 crimes of Fraudulent appropriation of property and Using fake documents of agencies and organizations.

At the trial on August 14, 2023, defendant Le Xuan The admitted to the crime. The defendant stated that in order to have money to spend and serve the "red and black" hobby, he had the intention of defrauding and appropriating other people's property. After spending from 2 to 3 million VND to order fake documents, the defendant mortgaged and pawned them to others to appropriate the money. The defendant stated that he had spent all the money he got from the fraud and was currently unable to pay.

Lessons from the victim

Attending the trial, the victims stated that because they knew the defendant, they were somewhat subjective in checking the legality of the documents that The brought to mortgage. Because of that subjectivity and negligence, they were defrauded of hundreds of millions of dong. After the incident, the victims all asked the defendant to return all the money he had appropriated. However, the defendant stated that his circumstances were difficult and he was currently unable to repay the debt. The defendant stated that he had divorced his wife. After their separation, his wife left two small children for the defendant's mother to raise. Because of her difficult circumstances, the defendant's mother could not return the money to the victims on behalf of her son.

At the trial, the defendant apologized to the victims and promised to try to repay the debt after serving his prison sentence. He also presented his difficult circumstances and asked the court to consider reducing his sentence so that he could return to his life soon, earn money to repay the debt and raise his children.

The jury determined that the defendant's criminal behavior was dangerous to society, directly infringing on citizens' property rights protected by law, affecting the local security and order situation. The defendant was aware that his behavior was a violation of the law, but his greed, laziness, and disregard for the law led him to commit crimes. In this case, the defendant had aggravating circumstances of committing the crime two or more times.

After considering the case in its entirety, the Trial Panel sentenced Le Xuan The to a total of 18 years in prison. Of which, 15 years for Fraudulent Appropriation of Property, 3 years for Using Forged Documents of an Organization. In addition, after combining with the 3-year sentence for Gambling, the defendant was sentenced to a total of 21 years in prison.

The case ended with a strict sentence for the defendant. However, the Council of Judges' reminder to the people attending the court to be more vigilant in daily civil transactions is still there. Because, nowadays, many bad guys have used sophisticated tricks such as forging important documents to commit fraud and embezzle money. Therefore, everyone should always be vigilant and careful to avoid falling into the trap of dishonest people.