Pretending to be a repairman, he stole more than 5 billion dong to Cambodia to play cockfighting

On May 11, the People’s Court of Ho Chi Minh City opened a first-instance trial for defendant Tran Van Dang (47 years old, living in Tan Binh district, Ho Chi Minh City) for the crime of “Theft of property”.

According to the prosecution, in order to have money to spend, Dang pretended to be an acquaintance to fix the toilet, air conditioner, fix the door and close the bed…to enter the house of many people and take advantage of the loophole to stealthily steal property.

Accordingly, at about 9 a.m. on August 29, 2018, Dang drove a motorbike to Nguyen Thi Cam V’s house on Le Dinh Can street (Tan Tao ward, Binh Tan district) to call the door. When he saw the maid, Dang pretended to be a worker who came to fix the toilet and then took out his phone and pretended to call Ms. V. to build trust.

Think the owner called a real toilet repairman, the maid opened the door for the thief to enter. After pretending to ask a maid to fetch water, Dang snuck up to Van’s bedroom, took 40 million VND and many jewelry, and escaped.

On September 10, 2018, when he ran out of money to spend, he pretended to be an acquaintance to invite Le Van Luyen (in Binh Tri Dong ward, Binh Tan district) to have a housewarming meal. Seeing Luyen’s mother at home alone, Dang pretended to fix the toilet for him and then took advantage of the loophole to take away from the owner 30 million VND, 2,000 USD and many jewelry and gold bars. The total assets that Dang obtained from Mr. Luyen’s family amounted to more than 142 million VND.

10 days later, also using fake toilet repair tricks, Dang stole from Pham Quang Toan’s family (in Binh Hung Hoa ward, Binh Tan district) 145 million VND and 2 savings books.

By this trick, in less than 2 years, from August 2018 to February 2020, this thief stole more than 5 billion 300 million VND from 24 families in Ho Chi Minh City. With all the stolen money, Dang went to Cambodia to gamble with cockfighting and lost all.

At the trial, the defendant sincerely confessed to the offence.

Considering that the defendant’s criminal act has directly infringed on other people’s property, causing social disorder, it is necessary to have a severe sentence for deterrence and general prevention.

After considering, the trial panel sentenced Dang to 15 years in prison. Forcible compensation for all stolen property to the victims, money theft returned in money, gold theft returned in gold, foreign currency theft returned in foreign currency.

Thanh Phuong