Vietnamese police have arrested a former ground service employee at Noi Bai International Airport in Hanoi for stealing assets from the luggage of passengers at least ten times. Police officers in Hanoi on Tuesday morning said they have detained Nguyen Quoc Thang, a 27-year-old man, who was a ground staffer of the Noi Bai Ground Trading Enterprise, for investigation into charges of “stealing property” pursuant to Article 138 of the Penal Code. Thang’s arrest followed a probe by local police after they received many reports from passengers who complained that they had lost assets from their checked luggage in recent months. The man had worked as a ground service employee for the enterprise since 2009, mainly in charge of transporting luggage and goods of customers from the relevant terminals to the aircraft and vice versa, police said.  On November 1, 2014, Thanh stole four Masstel Star 500 cellphones sent by air by Hanoi-based Viettel Post Corporation, police officers said, adding that the total value of the phones was about VND8 million (US$367). After being arrested, Thang told police he had also committed several other similar thefts in the past months.

In late May 2014, Thang pinched 10 LG G2 mobile phones from a package to be transported from Noi Bai to Tan Son Nhat International Airport in Ho Chi Minh City. On May 30, 2014, he also filched an A1400 camera from the unlocked suitcase of a passenger from Germany. In April 2014, he stole two Chanel and Gucci perfume bottles and a pair of spectacles from the luggage of a passenger coming to Vietnam from a European country. Investigators said Thanh had committed at least ten thefts in total. Thang put all the stolen assets for sale on the Internet, earning a total of VND176 million ($8,070). After investigating, police initially affirmed that a number of stevedores and forklift drivers at the airport had aided Thang in his thefts. The case is still under investigation.

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