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Former Brookfield resident Ephrem D. Nguyen, age 50, pleaded guilty to a fraud offense related to his scheme on Friday, Oct. 13, the US Attorney's Office for the District of Connecticut announced.
According to federal officials, Nguyen, who now lives in Quincy, Massachusetts in Norfolk County, had been employed by the US Postal Service as the Postmaster of the Danbury Post Office. As part of this position, Nguyen was responsible for supervising maintenance and repairs of the post office's equipment, facilities, and vehicles.
In November 2020, Nguyen began requiring that all maintenance and repair work be conducted by a certain vendor despite the fact that the post office already had a contract with another company for those services.
Nguyen also demanded that this vendor perform free vehicle maintenance repairs for himself, one of his children, a USPS employee, and an employee of his personal business, officials said.
Years later in 2022, Nguyen solicited and received $90,000 in cash bribes from the vendor in exchange for having the USPS overpay for vehicle repairs, which he justified as a "raise." Additionally, between January 2022 and February 2023, Nguyen used Postal Service credit cards to pay the vendor over $1 million, which was around $760,000 more than necessary to pay for the maintenance work, according to officials.
To make matters worse for himself, Nguyen allegedly embezzled more than $80,000 from the Postal Service by using these credit cards to rent vehicles for his own and others' personal use and also approved over $8,000 in fraudulent travel expense reimbursement claims for a coworker.
In total, Nguyen defrauded the USPS out of around $874,930.59, according to officials.
During his appearance in court on Friday, Nguyen pleaded guilty to honest services wire fraud, which carries a maximum prison sentence of 20 years. He will be sentenced on Friday, Jan. 5, and has been released on a $100,000 bond until then.
US Attorney Vanessa Roberts Avery commented on Nguyen's schemes, saying that he betrayed the public.
"As federal employees, we take an oath to protect the public, including funds that have been allocated for federal services," Avery said, adding, "This corrupt employee operated a brazen bribery, kickback, and embezzlement scheme that defrauded the U.S. Postal Service of hundreds of thousands of dollars."
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