Anti-drug police in central Nghe An Province have uncovered a 30-member ring that had traded drugs in a prison in Tam Ky District for about ten months. Most members of the ring were serving their sentences in Prison No. 3 managed by the Ministry of Public Security. Most have two or three previous convictions for murder, drug trafficking and rape, said Lieutenant Colonel Nguyen Trung Truc, at the provincial anti-drug police department. The ring’s leader was Le Xuan Minh, 43, of Nghe An’s Thanh Chuong District, who has been serving a drug-related sentence and has four previous convictions. The ring led by Minh was discovered after he was caught storing a bag containing 6.25 grams of heroin in his cell on May 21. On searching his cell, the police then found and seized four mobile phones in which he stored many phone numbers of his outside contacts that serve his ring’s drug activities. The police expanded their inspection and seized another bag of 9.25 grams of heroin from another prisoner. The ring was exposed then and Minh, after days of being questioned, confessed that he was operating a ring that received drugs from outside the prison and then sold them to prisoners at prices that were four times higher than street value. “There are many ways to bring drugs in from outside. The drugs could be hidden in gifts to prisoners from their relatives, or packed in condoms and then put into the anuses of prisoners’ visitors, or thrown into the prison’s premises by drug traders from outside, to name a few, “ Minh told investigators. The drugs were later secretly sold to prisoners when the ring’s members met them during working time under their previous agreement on prices and mode of payment. The ring had used 12 bank accounts for drug-related payment that were controlled by Le Quoc Hung, another prisoner. Hung and Minh had had their acquaintances open these accounts for them. From May 2011 to March 2012, the ring had stored and then sold nearly 259 grams of heroin in the prison, according to the provincial police’s conclusion. The police have referred the case file to the provincial People’s Procuracy for prosecuting 30 members of the ring for “illegally trading in drugs”. Prison No. 3 currently has about 2,000 prisoners, of whom 1,500 are former drug addicts.