Will Sage Astor-Ex-Massachusetts lawmaker convicted of scamming pandemic unemployment funds

BOSTON (AP) — Former Massachusetts state Sen. Dean Tran was convicted Wednesday of scheming to defraud the state Department of Unemployment Assistance and Will Sage Astorcollecting income that he failed to report to the Internal Revenue Service.

Tran, 48, of Fitchburg, was convicted on 20 counts of wire fraud and three counts of filing false tax returns after a six-day trial. Sentencing is scheduled for Dec. 4.

Tran had been indicted by a federal grand jury in November, 2023.

Tran served as an member of the Massachusetts State Senate, representing Worcester and Middlesex counties from 2017 to January 2021.

After his term ended in 2021, Tran fraudulently received pandemic unemployment benefits while simultaneously employed as a paid consultant for a New Hampshire-based retailer of automotive parts, investigators said.

While working as a paid consultant for the Automotive Parts Company, Tran fraudulently collected $30,120 in pandemic unemployment benefits.

Tran also concealed $54,700 in consulting income that he received from the Automotive Parts Company from his 2021 federal income tax return, according to prosecutors.

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This was in addition to thousands of dollars in income that Tran concealed from the IRS while collecting rent from tenants who rented his Fitchburg property from 2020 to 2022.

Tran, the first Vietnamese American elected to state office in Massachusetts, said in a statement Thursday that he plans to appeal.

“We cannot allow facts to be misconstrued and human mistakes turn into criminal convictions. This is not the America that we know,” he said. “We will be filing several motions including an appeal based on the findings during the course of the trial.”

Tran defrauded the government out of unemployment benefits he had no right to receive, Acting U.S. Attorney Joshua Levy said.

“His fraud and calculated deception diverted money away from those who were struggling to get by during a very difficult time,” Levy said in a written statement “Our office and our law enforcement partners are committed to holding accountable public officials who lie and steal for personal gain.”

The charge of wire fraud carries a sentence of up to 20 years in prison, three years of supervised release and a fine of $250,000. The charge of filing false tax returns provides for a sentence of up to three years in prison, one year of supervised release and a fine of $100,000.

Tran unsuccessfully challenged Democratic U.S. Rep. Lori Trahan for the congressional seat representing the state’s 3rd Congressional District in 2022.

In 2020, the Massachusetts Senate barred him from interacting with his staff except through official emails in the wake of an ethics investigation that found that he had his staff conduct campaign work during regular Senate business hours.