Malaysian women jailed for using fake credit cards to buy goods in Vietnam

September 03, 2015 | 09:46
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A Vietnamese court has given sentences of up to two years to two Malaysian women who used fake credit cards to purchase goods in Vietnam last year.

Cheng Pui Sing received a 2-year imprisonment sentence while her accessory, Wong Siew Wah, was condemned to 11 months and 15 days in prison on Tuesday.

The two women, both 20, were arrested in September 2014 on charges of “using computer networks, telecommunications networks, Internet or digital devices to appropriate property,” pursuant to Article 226b of the Penal Code.

As Wah had been detained for a period equal to the term of her sentence, she was set free right after the trial of the People’s Court of Ho Chi Minh City ended.

When Sing and Wah were working at a bar in Malaysia, they got acquainted with two men, named Ken and Sam, who asked them to bring fake credit cards into Vietnam to buy goods, the two convicts told the court.

The men promised to pay Sing and Wah eight percent of the total value of the goods purchased with such cards, the women said.

The two agreed to the deal and they later received from Ken two air tickets to fly to Vietnam along with 30 fake credit cards and 500 Ringgits in cash on September 14 last year.

They flew to Ho Chi Minh City that day and then used one of the counterfeit cards to pay for room rates of nearly VND5 million (US$220) at an expensive hotel in District 1.

On the evening of the same day, they arrived at Park Hyatt Hotel and used another fake card to buy a bottle of liquor for VND106 million ($4,660).

They moved on to hide the bottle in their hotel room.

The next day, the women continued using fake cards to buy cosmetics and handbags of well-known brands but they could not make any payment with the plastic.

Attendants at a shop suspected Sing and Wah of using fake cards, so they called police, who came and detained the foreign women for investigation.

On searching their hotel room, police officers seized many items related to their fraud.

Many similar cases involving foreigners have been tried in Vietnam in recent years.

In April 2013, the People’s Court of Ho Chi Minh City sentenced Malaysian man Lim Soon Ling, 55 then, to seven years in prison for using counterfeit credit cards to appropriate a total of VND451 million ($21,700 then) from many banks in Vietnam.

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