Online Vendor Sentenced in $5 Million Postage Fraud Scheme

Cuong H. Nguyen was sentenced in federal court today after pleading guilty to a conspiracy to engage in a wide-ranging postage counterfeiting, forging, and tampering scheme that, over the course of multiple years and more than 160,000 packages, deprived the U.S. Postal Service of approximately $5 million of postage due and owing.

SAN DIEGO, CA ­– Cuong H. Nguyen was sentenced in federal court today after pleading guilty to a conspiracy to engage in a wide-ranging postage counterfeiting, forging, and tampering scheme that, over the course of multiple years and more than 160,000 packages, deprived the U.S. Postal Service of approximately $5 million of postage due and owing.

As he admitted at the sentencing hearing before Hon. Cynthia A. Bashant, Nguyen digitally altered, counterfeited, forged, and tampered with various “postage evidencing systems”—i.e., postage meters. These postage meters are intended to expedite the delivery and shipment of USPS packages by allowing mailers to purchase and affix postage labels in advance of depositing them into the mail.

Nguyen primarily used the postage evidencing system known as Click-N-Ship when sending packages of beverages and food products from his businesses in San Diego. When the USPS received the packages with labels that Nguyen and others had altered, forged, and counterfeited, they paid much less to the USPS than was owed, but the packages—approximately 162,221 between 2015 and 2019—were delivered anyway … (click to read more)