Four months for Vietnamese man who claimed he was ‘trafficked’

A FOUR-MONTH prison sentence has been imposed on a young man of purported Vietnamese nationality, after he pleaded guilty to giving false information to gardaí in Monaghan to the effect that he was trafficked to Ireland and forced to work against his will.

In what his barrister, Dimitry Grinberg, described as “a really unusual case”, Viet Cung (20), with an address at Eblana Senior College (currently in use as an IPAS accommodation centre), Dún Laoghaire, Co Dublin, was charged with falsely alleging human trafficking against himself.

Sergeant Lisa McEntee told the recent sitting of Monaghan District Court how, shortly after 10pm on Wednesday May 13, the defendant presented at Monaghan Garda Station to allege he was a victim of human trafficking. He said he was brought into Ireland in October 2025 and held against his will.

Cung had alleged he was brought to an unknown location and forced to work in a residential property where he was “tending plants”. He also claimed that he was beaten if his work wasn’t considered satisfactory.

When gardaí looked into the matter, they saw that his phone actually placed him in Belfast at 5:55pm that day, and there was also further data that contradicted his account. When arrested and interviewed, he couldn’t provide a satisfactory explanation as to what had actually happened. His initial account had been that he was being held outside Monaghan Town and had just walked into the garda station upon escaping from his captors.

At Cung’s first court appearance on July 27, Detective Garda Joel Collins said the defendant had stated he managed to “escape” on May 13, and that he had walked for about 10 hours before a passing cyclist brought him to the station in Monaghan.

But evidence from an examination of his phone appeared to show he was actually in Belfast about four hours prior to presenting at Monaghan. This had been admitted by Cung in interview. Screen shots from Google Maps showed transit along a bus route on that day, and this too was accepted by the defendant.

Mr Grinberg told the recent hearing, that while his client was admitting he gave false information, he was still insisting that he had indeed been in Ireland since October 2025. He was also claiming that the facts he gave in his initial account to gardaí were “true enough”.

But he was accepting that he had given false information about how he got from the “unknown location” to the garda station. His explanation for this discrepancy had been that, because he was in Ireland alone, he thought no one would believe him. The barrister said Cung insists he was indeed kidnapped in Vietnam, then taken to Cambodia where he was “sold”. He was “transferred” to a few different countries before eventually being taken to Ireland. He also maintained that, upon arriving Ireland, he told customs officers at the airport he was “under pressure”, but that after a few hours he was “collected” by someone he could not talk to. He was taken to an unknown place and put to work in what he believed was a “grow house”.

Pointing out that photos had shown marks on his client’s back, Mr Grinberg said it was accepted that his version of events was “unusual”. He confirmed Cung was now an asylum seeker and he could go to an address in Bray if released.

Sgt McEntee agreed there were marks on Cung’s back but said there is no way of establishing how he got those. She recalled he actually showed up as a pillion passenger on a motorbike outside the Garda station, and that his stories “contradicted themselves” from the very beginning.

“It’s hard to believe anything,” the sergeant commented.

Judge Raymond Finnegan told Mr Grinberg there were inconsistencies in his client’s story no matter how it was looked at. He had pleaded guilty in any event, and could be given credit for having done so at a relatively early opportunity, so a four-month prison sentence was appropriate. This was backdated to July 27, however, when Cung taken into custody. In effect, that meant he would probably be released very soon, or might even get “straight out”, Judge Finnegan remarked.

* This article was published with support from the Court Reporting Scheme