Australian man jailed for robbing $6,235 from Saigon language center

Shane Joshep Nicholson, 49, went to the Compass English Language Center on Tran Quoc Thao Street in District 3 to apply for a job, the indictment said, Phap Luat TPHCM (HCMC Law) newspaper reported.

On the third floor, he saw a woman employee counting cash, grabbed money from her and put it into his backpack. When she shouted for help and tried to grab him, he pulled out a screwdriver and threatened to stab her.

But as he ran down the stairs, he was caught by the center’s security guards, who then handed him over to the police.

Nicholson told the police he had committed the robbery because he had lost his passport and had no money.

Several foreigners have been jailed for robberies in recent times.

Last August a British man was jailed for five years for robbing VND2.6 million ($111) from a convenience store in downtown HCMC while a month earlier another British man working as an English language teacher in the city got six months for stealing a phone from a massage parlor.