The international image of the nation once again took another hit as Christian Nnadike and Collins Deke, both Nigerians, were sentenced to 12 years each in a Vietnam prison for hacking into emails of local companies, contacting the company’s foreign partners and swindling them of their money.

The men, aided by Vietnamese, Le Thi Kim Quyen (who was sentenced to 15 years in prison) and another Nigerian, Mark Mamado Abdallah (who is currently on the run), are said to have been the leaders of a scamming syndicate in the country.

At the court hearing which took place in April, the men and their accomplice were also found guilty of another fraud scheme in which they pretended to be a British friend of two Vietnamese women on Facebook and asked them to send money as shipping fees to receive gifts.

According to prosecutors, the group defrauded many unsuspecting victims of over VND3.3 billion (US$150,000) between April and August 2013. Most of this came from the email hacking scheme.

Prosecutors said over the four months, the Vietnamese woman, Quyen and her Nigerian husband, Abdallah hacked into the emails of several Vietnamese companies doing business with foreign companies. They gave the information to Nnadikwe and then Deke, who would later transfer it to another Nigerian man living in Malaysia. The unknown man in Malaysia then used the compromised email accounts to contact the victims’ foreign partners, asking them to send payments to a bank account opened by Quyen and Abdallah