Hanoi police have suggested the prosecution of a local man who broke into an apartment, threatening the owner at gunpoint to rob her of a huge amount of cash, at a condo complex in the capital last month.

Police requested that Nguyen Tuan Viet, 32, be prosecuted for stealing assets, officers said as they concluded investigation into the case on Sunday.

The incident took place on October 2 at Golden Westlake, a luxury apartment building in Hanoi’s Ha Dong District.

On that morning, Viet, who worked as a car driver for a local bank, impersonated as an electrician and asked a dweller on the block’s 23th floor to bring her shoes inside so that he could do repair work.

After she had opened the door, Viet stepped in and locked it before pointing what law enforcement concluded was a plastic gun at the flat owner.

As Viet told the woman that he was being hired to kill her entire family at $25,000, she started to beg for mercy.

He then asked her to hand him money in exchange, forcing the woman to open the safe and stuffed VND1 billion ($43,000) worth of cash into a bag.

Viet even pretended to call his accomplice on the phone, before running away with the digital video recorder he removed from the apartment’s CCTV.

The 32-year-old was arrested by police two days later.

Viet confessed he made the wrongdoing because he ran up massive debts, adding that he had thrown the recorder into a river, together with a bag in which he by mistake put the VND200 million ($8,600) from the illegal act.

The police have so far retrieved VND750 million ($32,250).

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