BOSTON — A former state senator from Massachusetts has been sentenced to 18 months imprisonment for orchestrating a scheme to defraud the state’s Department of Unemployment Assistance, as well as for failing to report income to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS).
Dean Tran, aged 48, from Fitchburg, was found guilty in September on 20 counts of wire fraud and three counts of filing false tax returns after a trial lasting six days.
The Republican lawmaker, whose term concluded in 2021, reportedly collected pandemic unemployment benefits while he was employed as a paid consultant for an automotive parts retailer based in New Hampshire, as asserted by investigators.
U.S. Attorney Leah B. Foley remarked, “When Dean Tran took his oath of office as a Massachusetts State Senator, he willingly entered into a world of being in the public eye. He chose to violate the public’s trust not once, but twice by defrauding the government out of unemployment benefits and willfully omitting his taxable income. His fraud and calculated deception erode the public’s trust in elected officials and diverted money away from those who truly needed it.”
In a statement following his sentencing, Tran announced plans to appeal the verdict, stating, “regardless of the sentence I received,” and denied any wrongdoing, asserting that there was “no defrauding, stealing or scheming” attached to pandemic unemployment assistance.
He expressed in the courtroom that the investigation was influenced by “weaponization and lawfare,” asserting his innocence and labeling the legal challenge as a politically motivated “witchhunt.”
While engaged as a consultant at the Automotive Parts Company, Tran deceitfully collected $30,120 in pandemic unemployment benefits. Additionally, he hid $54,700 in consulting income from his 2021 federal tax return, as stated by prosecutors. This also included several thousand dollars in income he concealed while renting out his Fitchburg property from 2020 to 2022.
The court mandated that along with his prison sentence, Tran must reimburse the Massachusetts Department of Unemployment Assistance more than $25,000 and the IRS over $23,000, in addition to paying a $7,500 fine.
Notably, Tran made history by being the first Vietnamese American to hold state office in Massachusetts.
In 2022, he ran unsuccessfully against Democratic U.S. Representative Lori Trahan for the congressional seat representing the state’s 3rd Congressional District.
In 2020, the Massachusetts Senate enforced restrictions on Tran, which prohibited him from interacting with his own staff except through official emails due to an ethics investigation that discovered he had deployed his staff for campaign efforts during regular Senate working hours.
