Former Postmaster Faces Prison Time for $875,000 USPS Fraud

 

A former postmaster from Connecticut has 'fessed up to pulling off a big scam that took nearly $875,000 from the U.S. Postal Service. This dude, Ephrem D. Nguyen, who ran the show at the Danbury post office for years, recently pleaded guilty to some wire fraud thing that could land him in the slammer for up to two decades. They just spilled the beans on this case on Monday, but it's still getting checked out. The lawyer they got for Nguyen didn't want to chat about it, though.

Since 2003, Nguyen was the boss when it came to making sure everything at the post office ran smooth. He decided in November 2020 that one specific company had to do all the work, even though another company had a deal with the post office already. What's fishy is that Nguyen asked the new company to fix his own car and some other cars, which ain't cool.

In 2022, Nguyen pulled a fast one and pocketed $30,000 from the same company in return for making sure the post office paid more than they should've for work. He used post office credit cards for this, and he did the same thing again later that year, but this time he took $60,000.

Between January 2022 and February 2023, Nguyen went wild with the post office credit cards and paid the new company over $1 million, which was like $760,000 more than what they should've gotten for their work. He also used the post office credit cards to rent cars for himself and others, which wasn't part of the deal. On top of all that, he gave a thumbs-up to more than $8,000 in fake travel expense claims for a coworker.

Now, Nguyen used to live in Brookfield, Conn., but he's hanging out in Quincy, Mass. nowadays. They let him out on bail for $100,000, but he's gotta go to court on January 5, 2024, to hear his fate.


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