A food delivery man in Da Nang City, central Vietnam escaped prosecution as he was unaware of the concealed drug within the food while the person who ordered the delivery was sentenced to life in prison.

The People’s Court of Da Nang on Friday conducted a trial and sentenced Nguyen Trung Dung, 33, residing in the city’s Cam Le District, to life imprisonment and Truong Thi Kim Hang, 30, living in the same district, to 20 years in prison, both for illegal drug trafficking.

On the evening of June 4, 2022, in the area near the Tuyen Son Bridge in Hai Chau District, Da Nang, police officers conducted an administrative inspection of Nguyen Bach Duong, a delivery service employee, and discovered two plastic packages of prawn crackers and instant noodles, according to the indictment.

Upon further inspecting the prawn crackers and instant noodles, they found that the packages contained suspected drug pills and crystals.

Police then urgently searched the location where Duong had picked up the packages as per a delivery order placed via his company’s app at an apartment on Trung Luong 11 Street in Cam Le District. 

Inside the apartment, they found Dung and numerous items suspected to be drugs.

Expanding the investigation, police searched a parcel on a truck at the parking lot at Gate 1 of the city’s Chi Lang Stadium and detected a sealed box wrapped in tape containing 890 green pills.

The investigative officers determined that Dung and Hang were involved in the illegal trafficking of narcotics, including various types of ecstasy, ketamine, and synthetic drugs.

Dung had sourced the drugs by making phone calls with an individual named Tri with an unclear background in Ho Chi Minh City. 

The drugs were then transported by passenger bus from Ho Chi Minh City to Da Nang.

Upon arrival, Dung personally collected the drugs and stored them at Hang’s rented apartment on Trung Luong 11 Street. 

Subsequently, both of them distributed the drugs for sale.

When someone offered to buy drugs, Dung concealed them in plastic bags and disguised them in packages of prawn chips and instant noodles while Hang would write down the recipient’s address on papers.

Next, Dung created delivery orders through an app for the drug transactions.

Duong was the courier responsible for delivering the packages on the evening of June 4, 2022. 

While he was in the process of delivering them, police caught him red-handed.

Police officers determined that Duong merely worked as a delivery man and he was unaware of the drugs stashed inside the two packages.

Therefore, there were no legal grounds to prosecute him.

Police confiscated 344.5 grams of MDMA, 20.18 grams of ketamine, and 224.44 grams of ecstasy hidden by Dung and Hang for sale.

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