U.S. visa seller Sestak’s Co-conspirator 1 seized Vo Tang Binh and his wife Nguyen Thuy Anh Dao Michael T. Sestak, the former head of the non-immigrant visa department of the US Consulate General in Ho Chi Minh City. (Tuoitre) United States police have arrested Co-conspirator 1 of Michael T. Sestak, the former head of the non-immigrant visa department of the U.S. Consulate General in Ho Chi Minh City, who has been seized for taking bribes of up to US$70,000 from Vietnamese seeking visas last year. Vo Tang Binh, a 39 year-old Vietnamese-American businessman, was detained on Tuesday, September 24, when he arrived on a flight at Dulles International Airport in Washington DC. U.S. authorities did not know where he had flown from. The latest date Binh had entered Vietnam is April 7, 2013 but there was no information about when he left Vietnam. A day after his arrest, Binh was brought to a court in Washington D.C., where Judge John M. Facciola ordered that Binh remain in custody pending proceeding steps. Binh was the former director of the Santa Freight Forwarding Joint Stock Company, located on the 8th Floor of the Thien Son Building, on Nguyen Gia Thieu Street, District 3, HCMC. Binh lives in Tan Binh District, and has an address in Denver, Colorado. According to the investigation by the Diplomatic Security Service (DSS) of the US Department of State, Binh was Co-conspirator 1 of Sestak, who was found receiving US$20,000-70,000 per visa in bribes from Vietnamese people who needed visa approvals from him from March to September 2012. Sestak, 42, who was arrested in May 2013, and co-conspirator 1 are acquaintances who were known to socialize together in HCMC, and have been observed together at many functions within the Consulate community, according to DSS. Besides Binh, Sestak had four other co-conspirators, of whom Co-conspirator 2 is Binh’s wife, Nguyen Thuy Anh Dao, 30; Co-conspirator 3 is Binh’s younger sister, Hong Vo, a 27-year-old Vietnamese-American woman;  Co-conspirator 4 is Joe Nguyen, Vo’s boyfriend; and Co-conspirator 5 is Truc Tranh Huynh, Binh’s cousin. Of these co-conspirators, Vo and Huynh have been arrested, while Dao and Joe Nguyen are still at large. According to the indictment, Sestak and his accomplices set up a ring to sell visas to Vietnamese people, and the ring may have received tens of millions of US dollars as bribes from at least 500 visa seekers. Sestak used the money to buy nine properties in Phuket and Bangkok, Thailand, US investigators said. U.S. authorities have confiscated more than US$2.3 million from bank accounts held by ring members, and are trying to track down the rest of the money made from the visa scam led by Sestak. Sestak faces up to 20 years in prison on charges of conspiracy to commit visa fraud and bribery. Tuoitrenews