VN woman gets 14 years for trafficking 10 into Malaysia sex ring
A court in Ho Chi Minh City on March 16 sentenced a woman to 14 years in prison for trafficking at least 10 women to Malaysia since 2010.
Tran Thi Phuong Long, 32, worked for Ooi Chin Chye as a translator and supervisor at his hotel in Kuala Lumpur, where Ooi also ran an illegal prostitution ring.
In 2010 Long began to come back to Vietnam, seeking young women and luring them to Malaysia for her boss.
She promised the victims high-paid jobs as waitresses in beer clubs and massage parlors.
But prosecutors said when the women arrived in Kuala Lumpur, they had their passports taken away and forced to do sex work in Ooi’s prostitution ring.
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| Tran Thi Phuong Long and her two accomplices stand trial in Ho Chi Minh City on March 16, 2016. |
Ooi reportedly paid Long VND2 million (US$90) per woman. Prosecutors said between 2010 and 2014, she trafficked at least 10 Vietnamese women to Malaysia, adding that there could be several more victims who investigators were trying to reach out to.
In a related case, Long asked her Malaysian boyfriend Yeow Kheng Ho and their accomplice Tran Ngoc Quoc Sang to threaten a relative of one of her victims in Vietnam. They robbed the person of his iPhone.
Yeow and Sang were sentenced to four years and four and a half years respectively on March 16.
Another suspect in the human trafficking scheme, Pham Thi Chuc, will stand trial later. She has been accused of selling two women to Long.
