CA man sentenced in HELOC Scheme

United States Attorney for the Central District of California, George Cardona announced on November 5th that Martin Quoc Pham was sentenced to eleven years in federal prison for conducting an identity theft scheme and a HELOC scheme.

Martin Quoc Pham who is 28 and residents in Garden Grove, California received his sentence from United States District Judge George H. Wu. The Judge also sentenced Pham to pay restitution of five hundred thirty seven thousand nine hundred seventy three dollars.

Pham pleaded guilty last June to obtaining personal information from hundreds of consumers and using the data obtained to defraud over one million five hundred thousand dollars from home equity lines of credit and credit card accounts.

Pham played the major role in the aggravated identity theft schemes and assisted his co-conspirators in accessing victim accounts and obtaining goods by fraudulent means.

The conspirators in the HELOC scheme used personal information of consumers of JPMorgan Chase Bank. The used the information obtained to access the victims’ online banking accounts and obtain HELOC’s on the victims’ residential property. They then had the funds transferred to accounts that the conspirators controlled. The fraud was discovered five months into the scheme and netted its conspirators over one million dollars in losses to the bank and its consumers before it was shut down.

Pham and his conspirators also used personal information to encode counterfeit credit cards to purchase merchandise from Wal-Mart and Sam’s Clubs in Southern California. The conspirators in order to ensure the counterfeit cards would work ordered small items through a merchant account they controlled for a bogus company.  Once the cards were verified through the bogus merchant account the conspirators then used them to purchase merchandise from Wal-Mart and Sam’s Club. Records show that the conspirators obtained over three hundred thousand dollars in merchandise through this method of fraud.

Pham guilty plea included three counts of bank fraud, aggravated identity theft and money laundering in regard to the case against him involving the HELOC’s.  Pham pleaded guilty to conspiracy and aggravated identity theft in the case against him involving the fraudulent credit cards.

Pham conspirators are as follows:

Joe Inthisone,  pleaded guilty to bank fraud, aggravated identity theft and conspiracy. Mr. Inthisone is schedule for sentencing on November 19th of this year.

Viet Nguyen, pleaded guilty to conspiracy and fraudulent activity in connection with access devices. Mr. Nguyen is scheduled to appear before Judge George H. Wu on December 10th of this year.

Kyle Kongchan pleaded guilty to conspiracy and fraudulent activity in connection with access devices. Mr. Konchan was sentenced last month to two years in federal prison.

Pham and his conspirators were investigated by ITEC or The Identity Theft and Economic Crime Task Force. ITEC is sponsored by the Los Angeles Division of the United States Postal Inspection Service. Members of this task force include Postal Inspectors, the United States Secret Service, The Los Angeles Police Department, and The Los Angeles County Probation Department Special Enforcement Operation Unit.

The task force was created in 2004 in response to overwhelming complaints about identity theft in the Southern California area. The Task force has arrested over two hundred sixty one individuals, executed over five hundred thirty warrants and seized over two million four hundred thousand dollars in assets.

Assistance in the investigation was provided by JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo Bank.