A mother-of-three found with $320k worth of stolen Lego in her shed has begged to avoid jail for the sake of her children.<\/p>\n
South Australian Police raided the Dudley Park home of Dai Truong on March 31 this year and unearthed an extraordinary haul of stolen Lego.<\/p>\n
Such was the scale of the find, it took officers 15 pallets and two horse trailers to remove the haul from the property.<\/p>\n
On Tuesday, 34-year-old Truong pleaded guilty at Port Adelaide Magistrates Court to four charges relating to the raid – including three counts of dealing with property without consent and one count of unlawful possession.<\/p>\n
Her legal representative pleaded for her not to be jailed over the extraordinary haul of stolen goods.<\/p>\n
The court was told the discovery was made after police carried out a search warrant of the property, finding boxes upon boxes of Lego concealed in a shed.<\/p>\n
The case only revealed the origins of just a small portion of the staggering stash, with the court being told of three instances Truong had stolen boxes from the same store.<\/p>\n
Prosecutors told of three occasions in which Truong attended the Kmart branch the Marion shopping centre, on September 11, September 15 and November 7 of last year.<\/p>\n
On each of these occasions, she visited the pushing a pram, with a young child inside.<\/p>\n
Truong was captured on CCTV loading boxes of Lego into the base of the pram, covering them with a blanket, and leaving the store without paying.<\/p>\n
On September 11, she stole four boxes equating to $600 in value and just days later, she took four more boxes worth $300.<\/p>\n
Then on November 7, she returned to the same store, where she helped herself to eight boxes, adding up to $874 in value.<\/p>\n
However, when police raided her then home, they found more than $300k worth of Lego, which prosecutors said were \u201cbrand new and consistent with items in previous stolen reports\u201d.<\/p>\n
Truong\u2019s representative pleaded with Magistrate Aaron Almeida not to hand her a custodial sentence.<\/p>\n
\u2018Stupid decision\u2019<\/p>\n
The solicitor told the court that Truong, a Vietnamese national who moved to Australia on a partner visa in 2017, was a mother-of-three children, aged 10, seven and four, two with special educational needs.<\/p>\n
The court was told jailing her would have a \u201ccatastrophic impact\u201d on the family.<\/p>\n
He said: \u201cHer children have grown up in Australia and two of them have autism and require additional parental care.<\/p>\n
\u201cUnder the Migration Act, imprisonment of 12 months or more would see her right to stay in Australia revoked.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat would result in devastating consequences, not just for herself, but for three children who have grown up here.\u201d<\/p>\n
Truong also refuted the police\u2019s claim that the haul was worth $320k in value – instead insisting it was closer to $200k.<\/p>\n
Mr Almeida asked Truong\u2019s legal representative about the motivation behind her offending.<\/p>\n
He said: \u201cHer motivation is a silly one. She had seen how popular Lego was at children\u2019s birthday parties and then started to take it.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis escalated to there being financial gain for her.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt started as one stupid decision which led to lots of stupid decisions.\u201d<\/p>\n
The representative added that she wished to take full responsibility for her actions.<\/p>\n
He said: \u201cShe is, in her own words, very remorseful and deeply regrets her wrongdoing.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe said \u2018I acknowledge what I did was wrong and accept full responsibility for my actions. I promise I will not reoffend in the future and still have responsibility to care for my family.\u201d<\/p>\n
Following the hearing, she left court with her face covered by the hood of her coat, a mask and sunglasses.<\/p>\n
At a separate hearing, a single charge of unlawful possession laid against 42-year-old Thanh Van Ta, of the same address, were withdrawn.<\/p>\n
Truong, who now lives in Devon Park, will be sentenced next week.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A mother-of-three found with $320k worth of stolen Lego in her shed has begged to avoid jail for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":10612,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[11685,395,23,133,11675,8934,8206,6276,11678,11682,11681,11687,11686,11676,11684,1293,120,11680,10384,2637,121,11683,11679,11688,11677],"class_list":["post-10611","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-adelaide","tag-aaron-almeida","tag-adelaide","tag-australia","tag-australia-and-new-zealand","tag-boxes-equating","tag-court-hearing","tag-custodial-sentence","tag-david-hannant","tag-devon-park","tag-extraordinary-haul","tag-extroardinary-haul","tag-horse-trailers","tag-kmart-corporation","tag-legal-representative","tag-mother-of-three-children","tag-newswire-court","tag-oceania","tag-partner-visa","tag-search-warrant","tag-shopping-centre","tag-south-australia","tag-special-eduational-needs","tag-stupid-decision","tag-stupid-decisions","tag-vietnamese-national"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10611","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10611"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10611\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10612"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10611"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10611"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10611"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}