Two Irvine bank tellers embezzled more than $112,000 in 2013 and faced potential prison trips, but walked out of Orange County's Ronald Reagan Federal Courthouse April 7 visibly relieved with comparative wrist slaps.
Nether U.S. District Court Judge David O. Carter, a federal prosecutor nor defense lawyers thought prison would be the appropriate punishment for first-time offenders Duy Nguyen and Tuan Luu, both born in 1987.
Carter ordered Nguyen to repay at least $450 a month for the $24,000 he embezzled from United Central Bank, undergo four months of home detention and then spend five years on supervised probation.
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Luu's punishment was similar: repay at least $2,000 a month for the $88,500 he stole from the same bank, undergo six months of home detention and then spend five years on supervised probation.
Carter warned the two men he will send them to prison if they fail to pay restitution.
Both tellers were caught skimming cash deposits in an undercover, government sting operation.
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CNN-featured investigative reporter R. Scott Moxley has won Journalist of the Year honors at the Los Angeles Press Club; been named Distinguished Journalist of the Year by the LA Society of Professional Journalists; obtained one of the last exclusive prison interviews with Charles Manson disciple Susan Atkins; won inclusion in Jeffrey Toobin’s The Best American Crime Reporting for his coverage of a white supremacist’s senseless murder of a beloved Vietnamese refugee; launched multi-year probes that resulted in the FBI arrests and convictions of the top three ranking members of the Orange County Sheriff’s Department; and gained praise from New York Times Magazine writers for his “herculean job” exposing entrenched Southern California law enforcement corruption.