Date: September 15, 2023 Contact: newsroom@ci.irs.gov BOSTON — A Dorchester woman was sentenced today in federal court in Boston for tax and fraud offenses in connection with her operation of a temporary employment agency. Dam Ngoc Luong was sentenced by U.S. District Court Judge Leo T. Sorokin to one year and one day in prison and three years of supervised release. Luong was also ordered to pay $3,993,169 in restitution to IRS and $155,870 in restitution to Traveler's Insurance Co. On April 18, 2023, Luong pleaded guilty to two counts of filing false corporate and individual tax returns, three counts of failure to collect and pay over employee taxes and one count of mail fraud. From at least 2015 through 2019, Luong owned and operated Four Seasons Temp, Inc., an agency providing temporary workers for client businesses. A temporary employment agency is responsible for paying wages to the employees, processing employee payroll, collecting and paying all employee payroll taxes and maintaining workers' compensation insurance to protect employees who suffer work-related injuries. The agency collects payments from the client businesses to cover the agency's expenses and a profit for the agency. When collecting payments from business clients of her temporary employment agency, however, Luong cashed most checks rather than deposit the funds into her business account. Then, on annual corporate tax returns, Luong reported to the IRS only the amounts deposited to the business account and failed to pay federal taxes on more than $14 million of the company's income. Additionally, because Luong created Four Seasons as an S-corporation, the net business income and expenses flowed through to her Form 1040 individual tax returns. As a result, Luong failed to report more than $3 million in pass-through income and failed to pay $885,000 in personal income taxes. As the owner of the company, Luong also had an obligation to withhold taxes from wages paid to the employees. Despite this obligation, Luong paid more than $12 million of employee wages in cash "under the table." She failed to withhold taxes from the cash wages and failed to pay more than $3 million in employment taxes she owed to the IRS. Finally, Luong defrauded the insurance carrier she engaged to provide workers' compensation insurance coverage for employees, by concealing the cash wages paid to her employees. By concealing the wages she paid, Luong paid lower workers' compensation insurance premiums and defrauded the insurance carrier of $155,000 in premiums she should have paid. Acting United States Attorney Joshua S. Levy and Harry Chavis, Jr., Special Agent in Charge, Internal Revenue Service Criminal Investigation, Boston Field Office made the announcement today. Assistant U.S. Attorney Victor A. Wild of the Securities, Financial & Cyber Fraud Unit prosecuted the case.
