Federal prosecutors have charged a Little Saigon defense contractor with fraudulently certifying that equipment had been tested before purchased by the Pentagon and used on the B-52 bomber, as well as on 757 and 777 commercial aircraft.
Victor P. Nguyen, owner of VJ Engineering Inc. in Garden Grove, formally acknowledged product-testing records had been falsified for at least $220,000 worth of parts, according to a guilty plea signed this month.
The company cheated from 2009 to 2010, according to U.S. Department of Justice records.
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An investigation into the scheme cost taxpayers $100,000–funds a federal prosecutor inside Orange County's Ronald Reagan Federal Courthouse will likely seek refunded.
This month, Nguyen–who apparently escaped facing personal charges–signed a guilty plea that records for at least $220,000 worth of products were fake.
In addition to previously winning contracts with the U.S. Army and U.S. Air Force, VJ Engineering also supplied private carriers including Continental, American and Qantas.
The business–which also operates an office in Binh Duong, Vietnam–might have some future explaining to do given that its public sales pitch has included this assertion: “We will meet and strive to exceed our customers' expectations by continuously improving our processes, products and services.”
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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.