A Burnsville man has pleaded guilty to wire fraud after defrauding an electronics manufacturing business out of more than $1.2 million, announced U.S. Attorney Andrew M. Luger.
According to court documents, between 2019 and 2020, Thomas Thanh Pham, 53, devised a scheme to defraud a California-based company of approximately $1.2 million. Pham, the CEO of Enterprise Products, LLC, purported to provide consulting and financial services to commercial clients involved in engineering and manufacturing. Pham held himself out as a broker with supposed business relationships with large, well-known companies.
As a supposed broker, Pham claimed he could arrange service agreements between an electronic manufacturing services company based in San Jose, California (identified as Victim A) and his ostensible business affiliates in the electronics and technology sectors.
According to court documents, starting in June 2019, Pham began a series of discussions with Victim A, in which Pham pitched that Enterprise Products could facilitate multimillion-dollar manufacturing and repair contracts between Victim A and large electronics companies. Pham supplied Victim A with bogus documents, including fabricated contracts, correspondence, and business proposals.
As part of the scheme, Pham first required Victim A to pay a “deposit bond” in the amount of $1,278,000. Pham’s fraudulent tactics resulted in Victim A agreeing to enter into a contract in September 2019, through which Victim A ostensibly would receive millions of dollars in exchange for repair services.
Pham unsuccessfully pitched other phoney deals to Victim A that purportedly involved even larger financial contracts deals with other companies.
As part of the scheme and to give the impression that he was fulfilling the fraudulent contract, Pham caused the initial delivery to Victim A in California of approximately 20 samples of electronic devices that supposedly required repairs by Victim A.
However, Pham failed to disclose to Victim A that these 20 “sample” devices were, in fact, stolen property. It was additionally part of the scheme that Pham tried to lull Victim A into a false sense of security by offering a series of excuses and promises when Victim A either inquired about its money or demanded a refund.
Rather than maintain the money securely in a refundable escrow as promised, Pham fraudulently misappropriated Victim A’s funds for a series of unauthorised uses and transactions.
On Friday, January 3, 2025, Pham pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court to one count of wire fraud before Judge Joan N. Ericksen.
