Quincy Woman Charged with Stealing Nearly $600,000 from Employer

BOSTON – An accountant/bookkeeper at a Boston-based company was arrested yesterday and charged in federal court in Boston with stealing approximately $588,000 of her employer’s funds.    

Thanh Tam Thao Huynh, a/k/a Tiffany Huynh, 30, a Canadian national residing in Quincy, was arrested yesterday and charged with three counts of wire fraud.  Huynh will appear before U.S. District Court Magistrate Judge Donald L. Cabell for a detention and probable cause hearing today.  

It is alleged that from March 2016 to December 2017, Huynh was employed by a Boston-based company as an accountant/bookkeeper.  Between February and October 2017, Huynh caused at least 30 unauthorized wire transfers, totaling at least $400,000, from the company’s account at Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) to unknown accounts. Huynh allegedly provided her supervisor with false information concerning the RBC’s account balance and gave him an incorrect password so that he could not check the balance himself. The complaint also alleges that from September 2016 to November 2017, Huynh caused dozens of unauthorized charges, totaling more than $160,000, to be made on the company’s business credit card for her own expenses, including her rent, car payments, and to purchase thousands of dollars’ worth of gift cards.  Huynh, who was responsible for managing the company’s credit card statements, concealed her actions by deleting the details of her personal charges before providing the statements to her supervisor for review. When Huynh’s company discovered Huynh’s theft and unauthorized use of the credit card, they confronted her and Huynh admitted to both.

The charge provides for a sentence of no greater than 20 years in prison, three years of supervised release, a fine of $250,000, or twice to gross gain or loss, whichever is greater, and restitution. Sentences are imposed by a federal district court judge based upon the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines and other statutory factors.  

Acting United States Attorney William D. Weinreb and Harold H. Shaw, Special Agent in Charge of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Boston Field Division, made the announcement.  Assistant U.S. Attorney Mark J. Balthazard of Weinreb’s Economic Crimes Unit is prosecuting the case. 

The details contained in the criminal complaint are allegations.  The defendant is presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law.