Canadian Accountant Pleads Guilty to Stealing Nearly $600,000 from Massachusetts Company

BOSTON – A Canadian national who worked as an accountant for a Massachusetts company pleaded guilty today in federal court in Boston to stealing nearly $600,000 from her employer.

Thanh Tam Tao Huynh, a/k/a Tiffany Huynh, 30, most recently of Quincy, Mass., pleaded guilty to two counts of wire fraud in connection with a scheme to steal nearly $600,000 from her employer. U.S. District Court Judge Denise J. Casper scheduled sentencing for Oct. 4, 2018.

Huynh was employed as the accountant/bookkeeper by the company from approximately March 2016 through December 2017. Huynh used her position and access to the company’s bank accounts to wire about $425,000 from a company account at the Royal Bank of Canada to accounts in the United States that Huynh and her associates controlled. She also used a company credit card to make unauthorized purchases for herself and her friends. To conceal her actions, Huynh provided her employer with false balance information for the Canadian account, and withheld the personal charge information from the credit card statements she submitted for review. In total, Huynh defrauded her employer of approximately $588,278.

The wire fraud statute provides a sentence of no greater than 20 years in prison, three years of supervised release, and a fine of $250,000 or twice the gross gain or loss. Sentences are imposed by a federal district court judge based upon the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines and other statutory factors.

United States Attorney Andrew E. Lelling and Harold H. Shaw, Special Agent in Charge of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Boston Field Division, made the announcement today. Assistant U.S. Attorney Mark J. Balthazard of Lelling’s Economic Crimes Unit is prosecuting the case.