A federal grand jury has indicted an accounts payable clerk at an Anaheim real estate development and management company for allegedly executing a scheme to embezzle more $1.8 million during a three-year period.
Duy Duc Nguyen is facing six criminal wire fraud counts because U.S. Department of Justice officials believe he diverted payments intended for vendors to himself after stealing the company treasurer’s password.
“Nguyen deceived supervisors at Milan Capital and fraudulently caused them to authorize and make Electronic Funds Transfers of money directly into his bank account while seemingly paying the legitimate invoices of actual vendors,” the five-page indictment states.
Prosecutors claim the defendant created fake records to mask his crimes, lied when questioned about payments after vendors complained, used the funds for his personal expenses and operated the scheme from July 2014 to December 2017, when company officials fired him.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Rob Keenan will handle the case with U.S. District Court Judge James V. Selna presiding inside Orange County’s Ronald Reagan Federal Courthouse.
Nguyen, who was born in 1981, has not yet entered a plea.
But if eventually convicted, he could face substantial time in a federal prison given the size of the theft.
CNN-featured investigative reporter R. Scott Moxley has won Journalist of the Year honors at the Los Angeles Press Club; been named Distinguished Journalist of the Year by the LA Society of Professional Journalists; obtained one of the last exclusive prison interviews with Charles Manson disciple Susan Atkins; won inclusion in Jeffrey Toobin’s The Best American Crime Reporting for his coverage of a white supremacist’s senseless murder of a beloved Vietnamese refugee; launched multi-year probes that resulted in the FBI arrests and convictions of the top three ranking members of the Orange County Sheriff’s Department; and gained praise from New York Times Magazine writers for his “herculean job” exposing entrenched Southern California law enforcement corruption.
This is the oldest trick in the book. Good job Milan Capital Management. ?