A Nigerian man and three Vietnamese women have been sentenced to jail by a court in Can Tho City in southern Vietnam for “deceiving others to steal their assets.”
Micheal Ikechukwu Leonard, 45, received 18 years in prison, while
Huynh Ha Binh, Huynh Ha Uyen and Nguyen Tran Quynh Nhi, all from Ho Chi
Minh City, got between 12 to 15 years each.
According to the indictment, Leonard and Binh, 27, started living
together in August 2014 in Ho Chi Minh City before moving to Cambodia
and opening a fashion shop.
While in Cambodia, the duo hatched a plan to con rich Vietnamese
women via the social media. Facebook’s Messenger and Zalo are the two
most popular chat apps in Vietnam.
The Nigerian man used fake accounts and described himself as a rich
man or even a U.S. Army officer who had just gone through a divorce and
was “lonely.”
He approached wealthy women and tried to build a relationship with them, and as many as 37 fell for the trick.
To gain their trust, Leonard told the women he would send them
valuable gifts such as laptops, cellphones, jewelry and cosmetics from
the U.S.
When the women were sucked in, Binh, Uyen and Nhi pretended to be
Vietnamese customs officers and contacted the women, telling them that
packages sent to them contained expensive goods or large amounts of
foreign currency, so the women would have to pay a customs fee or even a
fine.
In late March 2016, after the group had conned a woman in Can Tho
City out of VND650 million ($28,500), Leonard and the other three were
arrested.
They all confessed to their crimes in court.
Binh and Leonard have a child together, and the baby is now with Binh’s parents.
In 2016, Vietnamese police arrested three Nigerians and eight
locals belonging to two different gangs for allegedly conning people out
of more than $1.3 million.
The gangs tricked the victims by informing them they had won big
prizes or gift packages from abroad but had to pay a fee to collect the
prize or bribe police and customs officers because they were worth a lot
of money.
They used bank accounts created with stolen or fake ID cards to collect the money.