Fraudulently selling "rescue flight" tickets, appropriating tens of billions of dong

On March 29, the Hanoi People's Court sentenced defendant Le Thi Vu (born in 1987, in Go Vap district, Ho Chi Minh City) to life in prison for fraud and property appropriation.

Previously, in 2022, many people filed a complaint accusing Ms. Vu of defrauding them of tens of billions of dong. The investigation determined that Ms. Le Thi Vu had defrauded 6 victims of more than 51.7 billion dong.

One of the victims was Ms. Hoang Thi L. (born in 1977, in Quoc Oai, Hanoi). In early 2020, Ms. Vu needed money for her airline ticket business, so she borrowed 2 billion VND from Ms. Hoang Thi L., with an interest rate of 1.5%/month.

Around June 2021, Ms. Vu needed money to pay off debts and personal expenses, so she gave false information to Ms. L. that the defendant was in the business of selling "repatriation" air tickets to bring citizens from countries with the Covid-19 epidemic back to Vietnam, priced at 175 million VND/ticket (including airfare, entry procedures, and medical quarantine fees).

According to the defendant, after 1 month, depending on the time, she would make a profit of 14-47 million VND/month/ticket. Ms. Vu invited Ms. L. to join the investment. Ms. Vu also suggested that Ms. L. use the 2 billion VND that Ms. L. had previously lent Ms. Vu to invest in "rescue" airline tickets with the agreement that after 1 month, Ms. Vu would pay Ms. L. a profit of 17-47 million VND.

To gain Ms. L.'s trust, the defendant went to the social network Zalo (airline ticket group page) to download a document about the flight to bring citizens back to the country from September 10-18, 2021 sent by the Civil Aviation Authority of Vietnam to the Consular Department - Ministry of Foreign Affairs to his personal phone and then sent it to Ms. L. via the Zalo application.

The dispatch reads: The National Steering Committee for Covid-19 Prevention and Control has sent a dispatch to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of Public Security, the Ministry of National Defense, the Ministry of Transport, and the Ho Chi Minh City People's Committee to consider creating conditions for citizens stranded abroad due to the Covid-19 epidemic to enter Vietnam.

Due to trust, from June to October 2021, Ms. L. transferred more than 38 billion VND to the defendant to invest in the business of "repatriation" airline tickets. The indictment determined that the defendant had appropriated more than 10 billion VND from Ms. L.

The victim who was scammed out of the most money, more than 23.3 billion VND, was Ms. Ngo Thi Phuong D. (in Ho Chi Minh City, a university classmate of Ms. Vu).

The accusation is that, around the beginning of 2016, Ms. Vu told Ms. D. about VE24H.VN JSC, of ​​which the defendant was the director of airline ticket sales. Ms. Vu invited Ms. D. to invest together, and would receive a profit of 3%/month. From 2016-2021, Ms. D. transferred VND 28.9 billion to Ms. Vu.

By April 2021, Ms. D. continued to transfer more than 232 billion VND. Ms. Vu returned more than 166.8 billion VND of investment and more than 42.4 billion VND of profit. Currently, Ms. D. requests that the defendant pay more than 23.3 billion VND and handle the defendant according to the law.

The investigation agency clarified that, in fact, Ms. Vu did not sell airline tickets. The defendant used the money to pay off debts, using the previous victim's money to pay the next victim.

The prosecution agency determined that Ms. Vu had recovered more than 1.2 billion VND.