Five Chinese jailed for stealing $203,500 from companies, toll stations

The Ho Chi Minh City People's Court on Tuesday gave Ma Ting Di, 43, 16 years for theft. His Chinese accomplices Huang Ding Piao, Cen Guang Neng, Ning Rong Teng, and Nong Hong Te, and Vietnamese accomplices Nguyen Van Thao and Hoang Quoc Huan got three to 14 years for the same crime.

Another Vietnamese, Hoang Minh Long, was sentenced to one year for concealing their crime.

The Chinese came to Vietnam in 2018, and Di contacted the three Vietnamese to hire cars to travel to various places for committing burglaries.

Huan would drive and be paid VND100-200 million ($4,330- 8,660) for each successful robbery, Di told the court.

On April 29, 2018, some of the gang went to a toll station on the HCMC-Trung Luong Highway in the Mekong Delta's Tien Giang Province, cut wires and beat two dogs to death before stealing money from a safe inside.

But an employee spotted them on a camera, and together with his colleagues caught Te with a bag containing VND2.8 billion ($121,200). Two of his gang members got away.

The gang returned to China on learning about his arrest.

But they returned a few months later and burgled several companies in Thai Binh, Hung Yen and Hai Duong provinces and Hai Phong City in the north, getting away with hundreds of millions of dong.

After they broke into a toll station in Hai Duong and a company in nearby Ha Nam, stealing at least VND1.1 billion ($47,600) on August 13, 2018, they were arrested by the police.