A Vietnam court has handed down sentences ranging from 12 to 17 years in jail to four Chinese men who were convicted of counterfeiting credit cards and using them to steal US$186,000 from two local banks last year.

>> Vietnam arrests 4 Chinese for using fake credit cards to steal money >> Bulgarian caught withdrawing money with fake ATM card After two days of trial, the People’s Court in the northern city of Hai Phong on Tuesday sentenced Xiong Jie, 35, to 17 years in jail on charges of “using computer networks, telecommunications networks, Internet or digital devices to appropriate property” pursuant to Article 226b of the Penal Code. On the same charges, Lin Wei, 50, and Lin Li Hua, 33, each got 14 years in jail while Lin Jia Jun, 21, received 12 years. These Chinese men had been found appropriating money from their victims whose credit card information was stolen by hackers and sold online. According to the indictment, after coming to Hai Phong from China, the four Chinese bought the stolen information and used it to make bogus credit cards. They then used these cards to transfer money from their victims’ bank accounts through a number of POS (Point of Sale) devices installed in a number of Vietnamese companies, which allowed the men to use their machines. They carried out 196 transfers between February and March 2013, appropriating over VND3.94 billion ($186,000) from their victims’ accounts at branches of Vietcombank and Vietinbank in Hai Phong. Upon searching their room at Lac Hong Hotel in Hai Phong in late March last year, police seized three laptops, eight mobile phones, five credit cards, many devices to forge credit cards, and nearly VND1 billion (US$47,200) in cash.

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