The police in Tan Kien Commune, who were patrolling on the morning of January 31, found and arrested suspicious Dang Ngoc Thanh, 44, and Tran Van Sinh, 47 who were waiting to selling the rock to Nguyen Thi Ly, 47, from District 7.
According to investigators, Ly met Thanh in the Mekong Delta province Can Tho, and expressed a wish to buy the valuable rock from him last June. Thanh and Sinh collected a small rock, painted it black, and put it into a box, intending to cheat her.
On the morning of January 31, Thanh made an appointment with Ly to go to Diem My guesthouse in Binh Tan District to see the rock. At the guesthouse, Ly agreed to buy it for VND100 billion.
Thank asked Ly to pay him a VND100 million deposit in advance but Ly told him that she did not bring the money and asked him to go to a house numbered C12/18 in Tan Kien commune, Binh Chanh District to get the payment.
Doubting the quality of the rock, at 10:00am the same day, Ly went to the rendezvous with Nguyen Thi Kim Anh, 52, who had traded in meteorites. when the two men saw them, however, they ran away without saying a word.
Afterwards, the arrestees told police that they had previously sold a fake meteorite to an acquaintance of Nguyen Thi Kim Anh for VND100 billion; hence, when they saw her, they got frightened and fled.
this, however, is not the first case in Ho Chi Minh City.
Last December, police in District 12 detained a man who cheated a woman by selling her a false meteorite for VND2 billion (US$95,000).
The victim told the police that one day in September, Truc and a few associates came unexpectedly to her rented house in Hiep Thanh 2 Ward and said they had bought a meteorite for VND4 billion and were seeking someone to whom they could sell the valuable rock.
A friend of Truc’s later contacted Lan and told her that he wanted to sell a meteorite for VND2 billion (US$95,000).
After being convinced, she paid them VND2 billion and took the stone home.
She later had the stone verified by experts in precious stones and was told that what she had bought was just a piece of normal rock.