Senior police fear Victoria’s most notorious Vietnamese criminal, who has just served his seventh jail term since being granted Australian citizenship, will turn to violent crime again.
Nam Van Nguyen once referred to as the “Saigon Tiger” has cost Victorian taxpayers an estimated $1.5 million in legal costs, prison time and victim compensation since arriving from Saigon via a Thai refugee camp in 1980.
Over the past 21 years, the ruthless extortionist has racked up 31 separate convictions.
They include trafficking heroin, armed robbery, aggravated burglary, grievous bodily harm, false imprisonment, kidnapping and blackmail.
He has spent almost 18 years behind bars.
Nguyen’s lawyer John Desmond told the County Court this week: “Since 1986 he’s had the barest of times at large in the community, at other times being incarcerated.”
The confessed heroin addict cannot be deported because he has Australian citizenship.
Nguyen, 47, this week pleaded guilty in the County Court to common assault and theft after accepting a plea bargain.
The charges related to threats he and a man made towards a relative they were told had raped his young niece.
During Nguyen’s confrontation with the victim in February last year, only months after his release from jail on parole for heroin trafficking, he and his accomplice stole a gold necklace after threatening their victim at his Keysborough home.
“Your behaviour was unacceptable,” Judge Rachelle Lewitan told Nguyen this week.
“It is clear from the depositions and the evidence . . . that there was considerable suffering on the part of the victim.”
Judge Lewitan said that before this week, Nguyen had 29 convictions from six court appearances between April 1986 and February 2003.
Before sentencing him she said she had to consider the welfare of the community and his likelihood of reoffending.
Judge Lewitan was told that Nguyen was on a methadone program.
“I am told that you desire to cure your addiction,” she said.
Before this week’s guilty plea, Nguyen had already spent 7 1/2 months in jail for breaching his parole and a total 306 days on remand on the assault and theft charges.
Judge Lewitan sentenced Nguyen to a total sentence of 306 days time he had already served while on remand.
Nguyen walked free from court on Tuesday.
Police fear he will return to a life of crime.
“Due to his long criminal history, there is every chance he will reoffend violently,” a source said.
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