California Man Charged In $90,000 Fraud Scheme Targeting Washington

We hear about scams pretty often and how to protect yourself from them, but this man who didn't even live in Washington State was scamming, not people, but businesses and charity organizations out of thousands of dollars before he was caught.

Washington State Standard reports that a Johnny Nguyen from California was arrested on 11 counts of fraud.

How did the California man scam Washington State?

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This was all in mail fraud and money laundering.

Johnny Nguyen would send bills to various businesses and charity organizations in Washington State under the disguise of a Washington State government agency.

These bills and letters looked so legit that those businesses lumped them with the rest of their bills to be paid, which they were, to an account set up by Johnny.

The letters would have official government letterhead on them, would sit various Washington State law codes and all that. These businesses wouldn't have any reason to think otherwise.

A couple of hundred dollars here and there was he already scammed Washington State Businesses and Charity organizations out of $90,000 according to Washington State Standard.

By the time he was arrested he had an additional almost $400,000 coming his way as well.

How did they catch him?

Although they do have ways to being vigilant against fraud, a couple of clue that clued them in was one had a Sacramento address.

There was a QR code that took them to a .org address instead of the standard .gov.

You can read more on the Washington State Standard website.

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