A mother in Da Nang, Tô Thị Ty Na, has been sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of her five-year-old son, Hoàng, in a scheme to fraudulently claim insurance money. The court found that Ty Na, 45, killed her son to collect over 4.1 billion VND from insurance policies she had taken out on him and his siblings.

According to the indictment, Ty Na had a previous conviction for theft and, after the death of her husband in 2020, found herself without a stable income. She sold her house for 1.2 billion VND, but when the money ran out, she devised a plan to take out life insurance policies on her children, intending to profit from them.

Ty Na purchased a total of seven insurance policies for her four children, costing over 100 million VND annually, with her as the beneficiary. Among these, two policies were taken out for Hoàng with Generali and FWD insurance companies. On the evening of January 2, 2023, Ty Na manipulated the camera in her home to change its angle before luring Hoàng into the bathroom, where she killed him.

After the murder, she staged the scene to make it appear as if he had drowned in a bucket of water. Ty Na then filed a fraudulent report claiming that Hoàng had died in an accident, allowing her to claim the insurance money. However, investigations revealed inconsistencies in her story, particularly regarding the positioning of the camera and the physical evidence that indicated Hoàng could not have drowned by himself.

Family members noticed the altered camera and reported their suspicions to the police, leading to an investigation. During the trial, Ty Na denied the charges, claiming that her intention in purchasing insurance was to protect her children's health and attributing the injuries on her son to incidents at school.

Despite her denials, the court found sufficient evidence to convict her of murder and insurance fraud. The Da Nang People's Court sentenced her to life imprisonment for murder and an additional six years for insurance fraud, with the sentences to be served concurrently. She is also required to repay the full amount of the insurance money she fraudulently obtained.