Tycoon gets death sentence for multi-billion-dollar fraud

A court in Vietnam has handed down a death sentence to Truong My Lan, the chair of Vietnamese real estate company Van Thinh Phat Holdings Group Corp., for embezzling $12.5 billion from Saigon Commercial Bank for a decade, Colombo Gazette reported citing Agence France-Presse. However, prosecutors said on April 11 that the total damages caused by the scam now amounted to $27 billion. Lan was accused of setting fake loan applications to withdraw money from the bank, in which she owned a 90% stake.