GEORGIA WOMAN SENTENCED TO 63 MONTHS IN FEDERAL PRISON FOR EMBEZZLING MORE THAN $1.6 MILLION FROM LOCAL BUSINESS AND LAUNDERING THE FRAUDULENT PROCEEDS

BATON ROUGE, LA - United States Attorney Ronald C. Gathe, Jr. announced that U.S. District Judge Brian A. Jackson sentenced Thanh Hoa Thi Bui, also known as Xena Bui, age 42, a resident of Valdosta, Georgia, to 63 months in federal prison following her convictions for wire fraud and making unlawful monetary transactions. The Court further sentenced Bui to serve three years of supervised release following her term of imprisonment and ordered her to pay $1,694,095.59 in restitution.

According to admissions made as part of her guilty pleas, between 2017 and 2020, Bui lived in Denham Springs, Louisiana. She worked at a small business located on North Sherwood Forest Drive in Baton Rouge, which has been in business for more than a decade, and where Bui was trusted to assist with the company's bookkeeping and accounting, among other tasks. Beginning in or about September 2017 and continuing through November 2020, however, Bui embezzled more than $1.6 million from the business by using the company's bank account to make hundreds of fraudulent transactions and concealing the scheme from her employer.

Bui accomplished the scheme in several different ways. On more than 100 different occasions, she used her access to the victim's bank account to generate checks that were payable to herself and then used fraudulent pretenses to induce her employer to sign the checks, which she would then deposit into one of her personal bank accounts. Bui also used the victim's bank account to pay the electricity and gas for a large chicken farm that she maintained in Mississippi and to make payments to a company in Covington, Louisiana, to which she owed money for real estate that she and another individual had purchased. In total, as the Court found at today's sentencing, Bui embezzled $1,694,095.59 from the victim and caused the victim a substantial financial hardship.

Bui took extensive steps to conceal her scheme, including by providing her employer with altered copies of the company's bank statements and by using her access to the company's accounting program to disguise the fraudulent transactions as payments to the company's regular vendors and suppliers.

Finally, as Bui obtained proceeds from the scheme, she would quickly move the proceeds through her bank accounts, withdraw the funds in cash, and make other transactions. For instance, on October 6, 2020, she fraudulently obtained a check in the amount of $56,252.52, payable to herself, which she deposited into one of her personal bank accounts. She immediately withdrew $50,000 from the account and then, beginning later that day and continuing through the following day, she purchased more than $50,000 in chips at a local casino.

In July 2023, a federal grand jury returned an indictment charging Bui with the criminal conduct described above, and the Court issued a warrant for her arrest. Her location was unknown, however, and she remained a fugitive until October 2023, when agents located her in Las Vegas, Nevada, and arrested her.

This matter was investigated by the United States Secret Service, with valuable assistance from the East Baton Rouge Parish Sheriff's Office and the Louisiana State Police. The matter was prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorney Alan A. Stevens, who also serves as Senior Litigation Counsel.