Anton Nguyen, age 54, of Fountain Valley, Calif., pleaded guilty on April 10 t to one count of conspiracy to defraud the United States. Five other conspirators have been sentenced.

From July 1994 to October 2018, Nugyen conspired with John Tran, an Orange County Social Services Agency case worker, who stole Social Security numbers and other ID information from his clients. From August 2010 to June 2019, Tran and his co-conspirators used the stolen information to obtain money from county, state and federal governments.

Nguyen, who owned and operated Century Travel & Tax, joined the conspiracy in 2012 and used the stolen IDs to create Forms 1099-MISC that falsely showed  payments made to the identity theft victims by companies, including those controlled by Tran and 

other co-conspirators. He also set up shell companies used in the scheme

Nguyen used the information to prepare returns and showed the purposed payments as income to ID theft victims so they appeared qualified for such tax credits as the Earned Income Tax Credit and the Child Tax Credit.

The fake payments were used to offset business revenue for Nguyen client to reduce taxe.

Tran and co-conspirators filed 433 returns using the stolen information to generate an least $973,153 in refunds. Tran and two other conspirators have yet to be sentenced.