Huynh Long Duy, 31, Nguyen Van Cuong, 45, Tran Van Trong, 35, Nguyen Van Duong, 30, and Huynh Long Hao, 29, are facing charges of "theft of property" after police arrested them on Saturday.

The five men are identified as members of a ring that stole export products as they were being transported to warehouses around Tan Son Nhat International Airport in Ho Chi Minh City.

Police started probing into the case in late November after a woman, who currently lives in HCMC and works as a representative of a factory in Soc Trang Province in the Mekong Delta, reported the loss of 3,000 fashion bags worth a total VND600 million ($25,450).

The missing bags belonged to a batch of 17,000 products that were bound for export from Tan Son Nhat airport.

Police found that Duy had teamed up with Cuong, the truck driver that transported the bags.

Duy unlocked the truck when it was on the way to a warehouse in Tan Son Nhat. He took the goods out of boxes and, then resealed them with the same type of tape used by export companies.

Colonel Mai Hoang, deputy director of HCMC’s Police Department, said that when first receiving the case, the department was suspicious that the group might have also committed crimes in other localities. As a result, the HCMC police collaborated with their counterparts in other cities and provinces.

The case in HCMC may not the first theft that the group has committed, said the colonel.

The group is believed to have also teamed up with drivers of other cargo trucks, taking advantage of gaps in the security of export companies located in the warehouse area of Tan Son Nhat airport.

The alleged robbers used the same type of sealing tape as that used by the export companies to reseal boxes of products after stealing the contents while the trucks were on their way to transport the goods or while they were in parking lots waiting for shipping companies to receive the goods.

At present, it is not clear how much property has been stolen.

Source: VNE