Because of greed, pushing oneself into the position of both defendant and 'victim'

Nguyen Van D. (born in 1986) is the owner of a small pawn shop in Dien Ngoc commune, Dien Chau. On April 24, 2017, through an acquaintance, D. received and accepted a car as collateral from Tran Anh Tuan (born in 1995), residing in Vinh City. After reviewing the car documents that matched the personal information of the pawner, D. agreed to pay Tuan 450 million VND to keep the car.

On May 11, 2017, Tran Anh Tuan was arrested. At this time, D. just realized that Tuan was a professional scammer. In fact, Tuan was just unemployed, not a successful and wealthy person like the cover he created. Tuan's trick was to go to car rental shops, then hire someone to fake car registration in his name.

With each set of fake documents worth 10 million VND, Tuan brought the car and documents to other pawn shops (mainly in the districts) to pawn for hundreds of millions of VND. Authorities determined that in a short time, Tuan had successfully carried out 5 property frauds in this way, appropriating 3.5 billion VND. Among them was the car that Tuan had pawned to D.

Nguyen Van D. at the trial. Photo:Nhu Binh

While the police were searching for evidence in the case, because he felt sorry for the nearly half a billion he had spent, D. secretly carried out another plan to save his property. Based on Tuan's testimony at the investigation agency, the police went to D.'s pawn shop. However, D. was one step faster, took the car and hid it somewhere else, then said that the car was rented to a customer who had not returned it.

Many times the investigation agency came to collect evidence but had no results. Even before hiding the car, Nguyen Van D. had removed the tracking device to avoid detection and search by the authorities. Using professional measures, after 3 months, the police discovered where D. hid the car.

“I don’t know who told D. to hide the car so he wouldn’t have to hand it over to the police. He took the car to his relative’s house in Thanh Chuong to hide it, but the police discovered it and went to the place to retrieve the car. D. was prosecuted for “Receiving property obtained through criminal activities.” There is no greater foolishness than this. If only he had reported the incident to his brothers so that everyone could resolve it together, he wouldn’t have lost money and gotten caught in jail like this,” D.’s older brother said at his brother’s trial.

At the trial, D. admitted his crime. D. said that due to his lack of legal knowledge, and because he trusted the "advice" of others, and partly because he thought that handing over the car to the police would mean losing nearly half a billion dong, he hid the car in an attempt to recoup the money. D. did not know that his actions were illegal, making it difficult for the investigation agency to find evidence of the case. The defendant himself is extremely remorseful for his actions and hopes that the panel of judges will consider and reduce his sentence.

As a person with rights and obligations related to the case, Nguyen Van D. requested the panel of judges to order Tran Anh Tuan to return the 450 million VND he received from D. when mortgaging the above-mentioned car. However, Tuan spent all the money he had appropriated on gambling and personal expenses.

With a 13-year prison sentence for “Fraudulent appropriation of property”, it will probably take a long time before Tran Anh Tuan can compensate the victims, including the nearly half a billion VND he appropriated from Nguyen Van D. In addition to losing money, Nguyen Van D. also had to serve a 36-month suspended prison sentence for “Receiving property obtained from another person through criminal activity” - a very high price for greed and ignorance.