Bay Area woman accused of buying Louis Vuitton, Hermes, Chanel goods with embezzled millions
A federal grand jury last week indicted a former Bay Area seafood company executive on charges of embezzling nearly $3 million from her employer and buying luxury goods with the proceeds.
Antonietta Nguyen, 55, is charged with five counts of felony fraud. She was arrested at her Brisbane home Thursday, according to federal authorities.
Nguyen’s lawyer said Friday that he was “surprised and baffled” at the charges, because Nguyen and the company, San Francisco wholesaler ABS Seafood, had settled the matter in 2021.
The indictment filed Wednesday and unsealed Thursday in U.S. District Court in San Francisco claims that Nguyen, former chief financial officer of and a minority shareholder in the company, used a credit card-based scheme to bilk her employer out of $2.7 million over more than six years until mid-2020.
With her allegedly ill-gotten gains, Nguyen bought items from brands including Louis Vuitton, Hermes, Chanel, and Neiman Marcus, federal prosecutors claimed.
Nguyen, responsible at ABS for keeping the company’s books and handling its corporate credit cards, used the firm’s bank account to pay “millions of dollars of expenses” on her personal credit card bills, the indictment alleged. In addition to buying high-end goods with her employer’s money, she used company funds to pay for property taxes on her home and for a relative’s college tuition, the indictment claimed.
“To conceal her fraud and enable it to continue, Nguyen booked false entries into the company’s accounting software,” the indictment alleged. “She provided falsified financial reports to the company’s other shareholders and to tax preparers and auditors who prepared the company’s annual financial statements and tax returns.”
The federal government is seeking a court-ordered seizure of any money, goods or assets Nguyen may possess as a result of her alleged crimes.
Her lawyer Christopher Morales said Nguyen and ABS went through a successful mediation before a respected former superior court judge in 2021. “All this has been resolved,” Morales said. “ABS owed her a ton of money, she owed ABS a ton of money. We worked through all the credit card stuff. She ended up writing a check to ABS. I’m not going to say the amount but it was a substantial amount. They cashed the check.”
“I don’t know who picked up the phone and called the FBI,” he said. “It’s all shocking and surprising on our end.”
The federal prosecutor in the case, asked Friday to explain why Nguyen was charged, referred the inquiry to a spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Justice, who did not respond.
Nguyen has been freed on $250,000 bail.