PHOENIX, AZ – A Chandler man, Vu Anh Nguyen, was sentenced to 30 months in federal prison after pleading guilty to orchestrating two fraudulent schemes.
Nguyen, age 26, was also ordered to pay more than $700,000 in restitution to his victims.
According to the Department of Justice, in the first scheme, Nguyen committed a type of securities fraud known as “free riding,” consisting of making transfers of funds into stock trading accounts from bank accounts that Nguyen knew were insufficiently funded. Nguyen traded with the transferred funds during the two or three days it took for the insufficiency in funds to be processed, resulting in losses to the trading entities of nearly $650,000.
In the second scheme, Nguyen embezzled from his then-employer, Amazon.com. During the short time he was employed by Amazon, Nguyen used his employee access to issue $96,000 worth of refunds to several buyer accounts that he owned or controlled. Amazon discovered, investigated, and reported the fraud to the FBI.