Former Massachusetts state Sen. Dean Tran was sentenced Friday to a yr and a half in jail adopted by two years of supervised launch, having been convicted of 23 felony counts together with COVID and tax fraud, federal prosecutors stated.
The Fitchburg Republican who served within the Massachusetts Senate from late 2017 till early 2021 was indicted by a federal grand jury in November 2023 and convicted in September of 20 counts of wire fraud and three counts of submitting false tax returns in reference to a scheme to defraud the Massachusetts Division of Unemployment Help and fail to report revenue to the Inner Income Service.
U.S. District Court docket Chief Choose Dennis Saylor IV additionally ordered Tran to pay $25,100 in restitution to the DUA, $23,327 to the IRS, a $7,500 high quality, and a compulsory evaluation of $2,300. Prosecutors stated Tran fraudulently collected $30,120 in pandemic unemployment advantages and hid $54,700 in revenue after his Senate time period ended.
“When Dean Tran took his oath of workplace as a Massachusetts State Senator, he willingly entered right into a world of being within the public eye. He selected to violate the general public’s belief not as soon as, however twice by defrauding the federal government out of unemployment advantages and willfully omitting his taxable revenue. His fraud and calculated deception erode the general public’s belief in elected officers and diverted cash away from those that really wanted it,” U.S. Lawyer for Massachusetts Leah Foley stated. “Our workplace and our legislation enforcement companions are dedicated to rooting out public officers who violate the legislation and holding them accountable for his or her actions.”
The Massachusetts Senate sanctioned Tran in 2020 after the Senate Ethics Committee discovered his workplace employees had been performing marketing campaign work with public assets throughout enterprise hours. He denied the fees. He was faraway from his place as assistant minority whip and banned from interacting together with his employees besides via official emails.
Tran narrowly misplaced his 2020 reelection bid to Sen. John Cronin, a Democrat. In 2022, he ran for Congress in opposition to U.S. Rep. Lori Trahan and garnered greater than 88,500 votes in his loss.
