Ex-Massachusetts lawmaker sentenced for scamming pandemic unemployment funds

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This article was published 07/02/2025 (301 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

BOSTON (AP) — A former Massachusetts state senator was sentenced Friday to 18 months in prison for scheming to defraud the state Department of Unemployment Assistance and collecting income that he failed to report to the Internal Revenue Service.

Dean Tran, 48, of Fitchburg, was convicted in September on 20 counts of wire fraud and three counts of filing false tax returns after a six-day trial.

After the Republican’s term ended in 2021, Tran fraudulently received pandemic unemployment benefits while simultaneously employed as a paid consultant for a New Hampshire-based retailer of automotive parts, investigators said.

“When Dean Tran took his oath of office as a Massachusetts State Senator, he willingly entered into a world of being in the public eye. He chose to violate the public’s trust not once, but twice by defrauding the government out of unemployment benefits and willfully omitting his taxable income,” U.S. Attorney Leah B. Foley said. “His fraud and calculated deception erode the public’s trust in elected officials and diverted money away from those who truly needed it.”

Tran said in a statement that he is planning to appeal his verdict “regardless of the sentence” Friday and insisted there was “no defrauding, stealing or scheming” with pandemic unemployment assistance.

“It was clear in the comments made in the courtroom that the driving factors behind my investigation were weaponization and lawfare,” he said. “I am innocent. This is nothing more than a politically motivated witchhunt.”

While working as a paid consultant for the Automotive Parts Company, Tran fraudulently collected $30,120 in pandemic unemployment benefits. Tran also concealed $54,700 in consulting income that he received from the Automotive Parts Company from his 2021 federal income tax return, according to prosecutors. This was in addition to thousands of dollars in income that Tran concealed from the IRS while collecting rent from tenants who rented his Fitchburg property from 2020 to 2022.

Along with his prison term, Tran was ordered to pay more $25,000 to the Massachusetts Department of Unemployment Assistance, more than $23,000 to the Internal Revenue Service, as well as a $7,500 fine.

Tran was the first Vietnamese American elected to state office in Massachusetts.

Tran unsuccessfully challenged Democratic U.S. Rep. Lori Trahan for the congressional seat representing the state’s 3rd Congressional District in 2022.

In 2020, the Massachusetts Senate barred him from interacting with his staff except through official emails in the wake of an ethics investigation that found that he had his staff conduct campaign work during regular Senate business hours.