On September 12, the People's Court of Soc Trang province held a first-instance trial and sentenced defendant Truong Thi Kieu Oanh (born in 1980), residing in Huynh Huu Nghia town, My Tu district (Soc Trang province) to 20 years in prison for the crime of Fraudulent appropriation of property.
According to the indictment, around 2018 - 2020, defendant Oanh and her husband rented land to cultivate rice, but suffered losses, leading to a debt of about 150 million VND. To have money to pay the debt, defendant Oanh began borrowing money from relatives and acquaintances, each of whom borrowed about 50 million VND, to make up for the business losses. Later, the amount of money borrowed and the interest increased.
To have money to pay interest and principal, the defendant thought of a way to say that he was acquainted with officers working at credit funds of many banks, so he knew many people who needed to borrow money to pay off debts and repay loans.
To gain the trust of the victims, the defendant initially borrowed a small amount of money and paid the principal and interest according to the agreement (with bank maturity records). After gaining the victims' trust, the defendant provided false information and borrowed a larger amount of money.
By December 8, 2022, the defendant was no longer able to pay the debt and fled. Since then, many victims have come to the police to report the actions of Oanh and her husband.
Through the investigation, from 2021 to December 2022, defendant Oanh defrauded 13 victims with a total amount of more than 23.6 billion VND to pay debts and personal expenses. In which, the victims were defrauded from hundreds of millions of VND to billions of VND (the most was more than 7 billion VND).
