A U.S. district judge sentenced former ABS Seafood Chief Financial Officer and minority shareholder Antonietta Nguyen to 36 months in prison, following her June 2025 conviction in a USD 9 million (EUR 7.8 million) embezzlement and fraud scheme.
On 14 November, Senior U.S. District Judge Susan Illston handed down the sentence and also ordered supervised release for three years, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of California.
Nguyen was convicted of 12 felony counts, including wire fraud, conspiracy to commit wire fraud, money laundering, and tax evasion.
During the trial, it was revealed that Nguyen devised an “inflated invoice scheme” involving family members who operated Pescaderia Pacifica International, Inc., a Filipino seafood exporting firm that was one of ABS’s top vendors and a main source for tuna imported into the U.S., the attorney’s office said.
The scheme resulted in ABS paying over double the true value of the imported seafood after Nguyen created false invoices that she hid from others at the company. Her family members then split the proceeds, with some of the money being wired back to bank accounts in the U.S. in the names of Nguyen’s husband and daughters.
From at least 2015 and continuing into 2020, Nguyen misappropriated approximately USD 2.7 million (EUR 2.3 million) in ABS funds and cost the San Francisco, California, U.S.A.-based company more than USD 9 million.
Nguyen used her access to ABS Seafood’s bank account and credit cards to divert millions of dollars to pay off her personal credit card and pay personal expenses on her corporate credit card. She also used the stolen funds to pay property taxes for her residence and a rental property, her children’s college tuition, and over USD 1 million (EUR 868,000) in luxury goods, among other expenses, the attorney’s office said.
Nguyen also evaded personal income taxes that she and her spouse owed for 2018 and 2019 by underreporting the amount of joint taxable income they accrued for those two years.
“The defendant devised multiple ways to defraud her business partners of several millions of dollars and got away with it for over six years. She exploited her position of trust in order to fund a lavish lifestyle for herself and her family members,” U.S. Attorney Craig H. Missakian said after the conviction.
