Trial For $1.5M Crypto Robbery And Kidnapping Held In Vietnam Court

The trial for the case of 16 suspects related to crypto theft will be held on May 10 in the People’s Court of Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. 

The suspects allegedly kidnapped virtual assets investors and stole $1.5 million worth of assets. The case will be heard on May 15 under the judge of the People’s Court of Ho Chi Minh City, Mr. Ngo Ngoc Thang. 

Kidnap And Theft Of $1.5M Worth Of Virtual Assets

A report from a local news outlet disclosed that a group in the region which includes Ho Ngoc Tai, Tran Ngoc Hoang, and others, is to face trial in a Vietnam Court. The suspects kidnapped a crypto investor, Le Duc Nguyen, and stole 35 billion VND worth $1.5 million. 

According to the report, Ho Ngoc Tai listened to Le Duc Nguyen in 2018 and disposed of 1,000 BTC tokens worth 100 billion. Unfortunately, Tia’s investment failed, sparking his suspicion that  Nguyen must have defrauded him. 

As a result, Tai recruited Tran Ngoc Hoang to find Nguyen and get his money back. Later they formed a gang with other people and staged a virtual asset robbery in May 2020. 

Two former police officers were among Tai’s gang members that assisted in tracking Nguyen’s location using GPS trackers on his car. Also, Tail hired a van and bought real-looking fake BB guns to threaten Nguyen to refund his losses.

The group planned a night robbery by setting one of the members to crash into Nguyen’s car with a motorbike while the latter was driving. In his attempt to check the situation of the accident, Tai’s group kidnapped him and took him away at gunpoint in their hired van.

They forced Nguyen to contact his brother and request a transfer of 1.000 BTC tokens to Tai. But Nguyen’s brother didn’t have such an amount. This prompted Tai to grab Nguyen’s mobile phone and personally transfer VND 35 billion worth of assets to himself. 

The gang later abandoned the victim in the city of Thu Duc.

Rising Cases of Crypto Theft

The virtual asset industry has recently witnessed increasing reports of crypto theft and fraud. As asset adoption rises, criminals also enhance their approaches to defraud their targets.

According to a CNN Business report in February 2023, $3.8 billion worth of assets were stolen through different methods in 2022. The report noted North Korea as the key crypto hacks and fraud player. 

The FBI linked North Korea and its government to several crypto-related exploits. These include the $600 million hack of Axie Infinity’s Ronin Network in March 2022, the $100 million exploit on the Harmony crypto platform in June 2022, and others.