Central Gia Lai provincial police asked the local Procuracy Tuesday to prosecute a 33-year-old woman for not paying back her debt of over US$500,000, the largest insolvency case so far in the province.

Early 2005, claiming that she needed money to trade in real estate, Nguyen Thi Thanh Nhuy, residing in Gia Lai provinces Pleiku city managed to obtain some VND8.4 billion ($528,202) worth of loans from 18 people.

She easily got the money with false promises of high interests, in some cases of 9% a month. The creditors, seeing huge profits at hand, mortgaged their houses to lend Nhuy.

High debt and financial difficulty at home even prompted one of her creditors to commit suicide.

Most of the papers for debt acknowledgement were uncertified and written in haste.

Nhuy said she used the money to bet on lottery ticket numbers and sometimes spent more than $21,000 on one day of betting.

The overdue debtor handed herself over the local police at 2am on Nov. 14 after angry creditors surrounded her house and threatened to kill her husband and two children.

Reported by Tran Cong Translated by Hoang Bao.