A fraud that lasted three years. In the United States, an American can spend two decades in prison for lending their identity to the Chinese. As the United States Ministry of Justice said in a statement, Minh Phuong Ngoc Vong, who lives in Maryland, declared himself guilty in April for “conspiracy to commit electronic fraud.”
This, as part of a ploy that involves several strangers to cheat US companies. Between 2021 and 2024, he was hired as a remote software developer in several US companies thanks to false statements about their training and experience.
In total, Minh Phuong Ngoc Vong worked at at least 13 different American companies, for a salary of more than $ 970,000 for software development services. But in reality, this work was done by other people.
Access to sensitive systems from China
Minh Phuong Ngoc Vong drew with a foreign national who lives in China under the name of William James and other people. At the end of January 2023, the latter, for example, presented a fraudulent CV on behalf of the first to a technology company based in Virginia for a web applications developer required by US citizenship as a working condition.
The CV in question indicated that Minh Phuong Ngoc Vong has a science license and had a 16 -year experience as a software developer when he did not have a university diploma or an experience in the field of software development.
Then he spent an online job interview on March 28, 2023, during which he presented his Maryland driver’s license and his American passport to verify his identity and citizenship, and thus won the job. Employment for which he was responsible for working in a contract for the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). This referred to an application used by several US government agencies to administer confidential information related to national defense problems.
On the laptop provided by the company, Minh Phuong Ngoc Vong has installed remote access software to allow William James to easily access while hiding its location in China. Therefore, the foreign citizen has used his identification information to carry out his work between March and July 2023 from China and the company paid more than $ 28,000 in salary to Minh Phuong Ngoc Vong, who sent William James and other conspirators abroad that helped him.
In addition to FAA, other companies have subcontracted US services to government agencies, the Ministry of Justice underlines.
For these frauds, Minh Phuong Ngoc Vong faces a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison. He will know his sentence on August 28.
Source: BFM TV
