Police and customs officers in Ho Chi Minh City have busted a drug ring, arresting four people and seizing almost 500kg of crystal meth stashed in package pressing machines and about to be shipped overseas.

Hundreds of police officers raided a warehouse in Vinh Loc A Commune, Binh Chanh District, Ho Chi Minh City and apprehended four people including Liu Ming Yang, the 34-year-old kingpin from Taiwan, Taiwanese Jhu Minh Jyun, 32, Taiwanese Nguyen Thi Thu Van, 36, and To Gia My, a 33-year-old person from mainland China, on Saturday, officials said on Sunday at a press meeting.

The meth haul weighed nearly 500kg and was worth almost VND500 billion (US$21.4 million), they added.

It was hidden in four package pressing machines and was about to be transported out of Vietnam.

The drug dealers were cunning and caused difficulty for officers by loading the meth volume on a seeming supermarket delivery car and leaving it there for their accessories to pick up, Major General Pham Van Cac, a senior official from the Ministry of Public Security, said at the press meeting.  

Liu ordered Jhu to come to Vietnam on March 14 to receive four package pressing machines imported from mainland China and transport them to a warehouse at 110/1, Go Xoai, Binh Hung Hoa A Ward, Binh Tan District, according to a police investigation.

The four dealers then shifted their meth to another warehouse in Vinh Loc A Commune, Binh Chanh District because local police had busted several major drug rings recently.

They were arrested by police when carrying the drug volume in a Toyota Innova car to the warehouse in Binh Chanh to stash it in the four package pressing machines.

A special mission was first launched in September 2018, with the participation of Ministry of Public Security officers, Ho Chi Minh City customs officers, and even intelligence personnel, to bust this ring, Dinh Ngoc Thang, director of the Customs Department of Ho Chi Minh City, said.

In Vietnam, trading over 100 grams of heroin, meth, cocaine, amphetamine or MDMA (ecstasy) is punishable with up to 20 years’ imprisonment, life imprisonment or capital punishment.

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