Dorchester businessman pleads guilty to million-dollar payroll tax fraud scheme

Date: Sept. 11, 2024

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BOSTON - A Dorchester man pleaded guilty today to a multiyear tax fraud scheme in which he failed to pay employment taxes for his temporary employment agency.

Det Tran pleaded guilty to two counts of failure to collect and pay over employment taxes. U.S. District Judge Leo T. Sorokin scheduled sentencing for Dec. 10, 2024.

From at least 2018 through 2021, Tran owned and operated HTP Temp. Inc. (HTP), an agency that provided temporary workers for client businesses. During that time, Tran paid $8 million in "off the books" cash wages to HTP employees. Through his concealment of these cash wages, Tran caused his accountant to prepare false quarterly filings to the IRS for HTP's employee wages and tax withholdings between 2018 and 2021. As a result, Tran evaded more than $2.1 million in employment taxes owed to the IRS.

The charge of failure to pay over taxes provides for a sentence of up to five years in prison, three years of supervised release and a fine of $250,000 or twice the gross gain or loss, whichever is greater. Sentences are imposed by a federal district court judge based upon the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines and statutes which govern the determination of a sentence in a criminal case.

Acting United States Attorney Joshua S. Levy and Harry Chavis, Jr., Special Agent in Charge of the Internal Revenue Service Criminal Investigation (IRS-CI) in Boston made the announcement. Assistant U.S. Attorney Benjamin A. Saltzman of the Securities, Financial & Cyber Fraud Unit is prosecuting the case.

IRS-CI is the criminal investigative arm of the IRS, responsible for conducting financial crime investigations, including tax fraud, narcotics trafficking, money-laundering, public corruption, healthcare fraud, identity theft and more. IRS-CI special agents are the only federal law enforcement agents with investigative jurisdiction over violations of the Internal Revenue Code, obtaining a more than a 90 percent federal conviction rate. The agency has 20 field offices located across the U.S. and 12 attaché posts abroad.