Dean Tran: Fraud, Forgery, and Firearms

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1:18An elderly woman in north-central Massachusetts was having a quiet Monday morning in June 2019. It was early and she was alone in the house. After her husband had passed, her mornings were usually spent in solitude. She had nearly sold her late husband's gun collection to a neighbor. She had even handed over the firearms before changing her mind. The neighbor returned them on Sunday, just the day before. But now, she was glad she had caught off the sale. Because she heard a sound. Something like a footstep. Like someone was inside the house.

2:03Dean Tran:The behavior that he was accused of, it was so strange. It made me stop because it's not something I've run into, at least in my reporting career. It was very weird. Before she knew what was happening, a man appeared in front of her, demanding the keys to her gun safe. Terrified for her life, she dropped the keys and fled to her bedroom to hide. As she waited out the robbery, unsure of what would become of her, she realized something chilling. She recognized this man. The Massachusetts candidate for Congress, who's accused of stealing from an elderly constituents. It just started unraveling that he's turned into a criminal.

2:58This is The Opportunist, an original podcast from Podcast One. I'm Sarah James McLaughlin. You're listening to a story told in one episode called Dean Tran, Fraud, Forgery, and Firearms. In this episode, we dive into the story of Dean Tran, a former Massachusetts state senator who rapidly transformed his reputation from career politician to career criminal.

3:40Dean Tran was born in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, in 1975. His early childhood coincided with the chaos of the end of the Vietnam War and the beginning of a communist government in Vietnam. His family left Vietnam when Tran was just four years old, seeking what many immigrant families hope to find in a new country. Safety, opportunity, and a fresh start. As an infant, I survived the war, and I also survived the ocean where plenty of people died around me when my family and I fled communism to have an opportunity at freedom. And as a toddler, I spent my toddler years in one of the roughest refugee camps in the world, and I survived that.

4:33The Tran family spent two long years in a refugee camp in Thailand waiting for the United States green cards. Those cards only came when a Catholic priest from Clinton, Massachusetts, sponsored their application in 1980. From then on, Tran called Massachusetts home. Ultimately, the Tran family settled in the town of Fitchburg. That's where Tran lived his formative years, graduating from Fitchburg High School and coming back home to Fitchburg for summer break from Brandeis University. Here's Tim Dunn, the lead political reporter for the Boston Herald. He came over here with his family after escaping Vietnam at about four years old.

5:20They've lived here ever since. Dean got into politics at the city council level, I believe, and he was representing Fitchburg. Tran got into local politics by joining the Fitchburg City Council in 2005. At the time, it was a pretty big deal, or as big of a deal as local politics can be. He was the first person of color ever to be elected into Fitchburg City Council. He was also a staunch Republican, which isn't the political norm in Massachusetts. I chose to be part of the Republican Party because I'm very fiscal responsible. Tran held his seat and served as Fitchburg's city councilor at large for 12 years.

6:08Here is Matt Stout, a political reporter from the Boston Globe.

6:13Dean Tran:Fitchburg is like a working class city in central Mass. You know, that part of the state tends to be a little more purple compared to the rest of Massachusetts. which obviously is all relatively speaking, given this is a state where Democrats really hold the majority of elected seats and really, really dominate. For Republicans to win there and to have that sort of, you know, wide appeal to do so, you know, that is, that's proven to be, you know, rare in lots of corners of the state. After 12 years as a city councilor, Tran was ready to take his political career to the next level. Hello, my name is Dean Tran, and I am a candidate for the 3rd Worcester District State Representative.

6:56I have called this district my home for the last 30 years. During a special election in 2017, Tran campaigned for state senate and successfully overturned a historically democratic seat in north-central Massachusetts. This win made him the first Vietnamese American to be elected to Massachusetts State Senate. Dean Trian was making history and headlines. He was first elected in 2017 to the State Senate.

7:29Dean Tran:When he entered the Senate, it was kind of like a high watermark for not just him, but, you know, sort of where Republicans were for the Senate. the chambers dominated by Democrats. He made it six Republicans, which was far more than any time since I covered it. I mean, he was the first person of color to win a seat in Fitchburg City Council. He was the first Vietnamese American senator in our state's history. He came in there as more high profile, I guess, than you normally would for a state senator because he kind of represented all these firsts and won a seat that was held by Democrats for a long time in a special election.

8:10Dean Tran:So there was a lot of focus on him for all those different reasons. Tran had achieved a lot that he could be proud of and had started to pave the way for people of color, especially Vietnamese Americans, to enter the Massachusetts political scene. In an article that covers Tran's swearing-in ceremony, it is noted that members of the Vietnamese American community from all over Massachusetts came to support him. Before he spent his first day at work in the statehouse, he was already making a difference as a powerful representative for his Vietnamese community. A lot of his success, as is the case with most politicians, was based on public perception.

8:53In other words, trans reputation was everything. They had Republican values. It could be a tough kind of mountain to climb being a Republican in Massachusetts. I think right now their state Senate only totals about like five Republicans out of, you know, like 300 state lawmakers or something. So it's very small in numbers and it's a hard thing to even get elected. But he had a good reputation, you know, an immigrant who escaped communist Vietnam and made his way over here and earned citizenship with his family and his own home in America, in Massachusetts, in state government. For just a little while, Tran was flying high.

9:36He gained leadership status as the assistant minority whip in the Massachusetts State Senate and started to set his sights on Congress. My name is Dean Tran, former Massachusetts State Senator from Fitchburg and candidate for the United States Congress for the Massachusetts 3rd Congressional District. I sincerely appreciate the opportunity to speak to you today. There's a proverb that says, absolute power corrupts absolutely. At last, we have emerged from the constraints of the pandemic only to face a new reality. A corrupt presidential administration that continues to be... where the less favorable elements of Tran's character started to make their way into the public eye.

10:31According to reporting, ethics complaints were lodged against Tran almost immediately after he settled into office in 2017, which he appeared to brush off and largely ignore. These complaints culminated in two letters sent by an anonymous whistleblower to the Senate Committee on Ethics in 2019. These letters brought up major concerns on how Tran was leading his Senate staff, specifically regarding conflict of interest in campaign finance laws.

11:06Dean Tran:The State Senate Ethics Commission had done essentially an investigation and put out a report. He was essentially assigning his taxpayer-funded staff campaign tasks, Using them for fundraising work, sort of intertwining them in a way where it was hard to tell where their official duties stopped and where this campaign duties began. And that's a problem. It was pretty extraordinary. He was stripped of his leadership position within his own caucus. He was only allowed to communicate with his staff by email. During his 2018 re-election campaign, Tran was found guilty of forcing his staffers to fundraise for him while on the job.

11:52When the staffers protested, he threatened to fire them. It is expressly illegal for state employees to perform campaign duties during office hours on the taxpayer's dime. But in Tran's offices, that was the majority of their job. After this ethics investigation, Tran was stripped of his leadership position as assistant minority whip and was banned from communicating directly with his own staff. He did not take this well. Tran was adamant that these accusations were unfounded and insisted that the whole case was a partisan attempt to take him down because he was a Republican, which seemed like a stretch.

12:40Dean Tran:The initial ethics report, he called it libelous. Anytime these reports of service or the cases come up against him, he would push back hard. It was sort of that fighter's mentality of punching back, you know, feeling that he was wrong. Tran maintained his innocence throughout his re-election campaigns, but his refusal to take responsibility only deepened the damage. Tran failed to win re-election in 2020, and he served his last day in the state Senate in January of 2021. He found himself disgraced and jobless in the middle of a worldwide pandemic. But his next move would land him back in the local news and gain the attention of the feds.

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16:03Dean Tran's story is a tale of high highs and low lows. He started his career in the headlines as a trailblazing politician, becoming the first Vietnamese American to hold office in Massachusetts. He was seen as a capable politician with a strong value system, supported by an inspiring personal story of immigration and living the American dream. But Tran blew up his image almost immediately upon earning a seat in the Massachusetts State Senate after an ethics probe found him guilty of breaking campaign laws. Instead of taking responsibility for his actions, Tran claimed the investigation was rigged against him.

16:49Stripped of his leadership responsibilities and unable to earn goodwill with his constituents, Trin lost his seat in the state Senate in the winter of 2021. In January of 2021, the COVID-19 pandemic was in full swing in the United States, and the economy was in turmoil. Jobs were unstable, or disappeared altogether, and a record number of people found themselves in an unexpected financial crisis. To meet demonstrated need, pandemic unemployment benefits were rolled out across the country. Those who had lost their income because of COVID-19 were eligible to receive a set amount of money each week as an emergency measure.

17:35Dean Tran had not lost his job due to COVID-19. He simply hadn't been re-elected. On top of that, he was still earning money. For years, Tran had been an independent contractor with a New Hampshire-based automotive parts company. He also rented out property and earned income as a landlord. With this information in hand, would it make sense for Tran to apply for pandemic unemployment benefits? No, but he did it anyway. Here's Tim Dunn from the Boston Herald. He was arrested on November 17, 2023 for the wire fraud stuff. And what they found is that he had collected$30 ,000 in COVID-19 unemployment benefits, as well as withholding that rental income and consulting income he had, too.

18:30So, you know,$30 ,000 certainly isn't something the government's going to blink at and walk away from. To be specific, Tran had received more than$30 ,000 of fraudulent pandemic assistance money, failed to disclose more than$50 ,000 in earnings from his auto parts job on his 2021 tax return, and failed to disclose thousands more dollars of income from his rental property from 2020 to 2022. A former state senator already facing charges of violating state ethics laws is under arrest for COVID fraud. He was arrested in November of 2023 for 25 counts of wire fraud and three counts of failing to file tax returns.

19:20When faced once again with the consequences of his own actions, Tran cried wolf. He insisted that these charges were false and politically biased. The court obviously didn't see it that way. The case was open and shut. Tran was convicted on 23 of those charges in September of 2024 and was sentenced in February of 2025 to 18 months in prison, followed by two years of supervised release, as well as over$58 ,000 in restitution and fines. While 18 months in prison sounds pretty bad, this wasn't the end of trouble for Tran. He was just getting started. While the feds were executing a search warrant of his home in relation to pandemic assistance fraud and tax evasion, they found something interesting.

20:13According to court records, during the home search, federal agents asked Tran about a letter he had submitted to unemployment agency officials while trying to get his benefits approved. This letter was a job offer from the owner and CEO of Alicon Enterprises, a food company. In theory, this job offer letter would serve as proof that Tran had acquired a job but then lost it because of the pandemic. At the time, this worked. Tran was able to collect over$30 ,000 in unemployment benefits. But what came out in later investigations was glaringly obvious. This was not a real job offer. The CEO and owner of Alicon Enterprises was Tran's sister, Tuyit Martin.

21:06From there, the truth came spilling out. The siblings had worked together to write a fake job offer so that Tran could receive unemployment benefits. They wrote the letter together, and Tran forged his sister's signature on the final document. Not only had Tran added another layer of deceit to his fraud case, but he had dragged his sister into it. Their indictments came through in June of 2024, right between Tran's previous wire fraud trial and his sentencing. Tran was charged with obstruction of justice and making false statements, while his sister Tuyit was charged with two counts of obstruction of justice and one count of perjury.

21:53Once again, the case was open and shut, but this time Tran was watching it all unfold from prison. He pled guilty to both counts, and in January of 2026, he was sentenced to 12 months in prison, 11 of which could be served concurrently with his previous conviction. And plain words, he only had one month tacked on to his time. If you're wondering about his sister too yet, she was found guilty of federal obstruction of justice and was sentenced in June of 2026 to two years of supervised release and a fine of$40 ,000. In total, including his charges from 2023, this previously upstanding public figure racked up 25 counts in federal court across two separate but intertwined cases.

22:49And Tran wasn't done. He had a third case running at the same time. And this one was totally out of left field.

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25:13By 2026, Dean Tran had gone from a Massachusetts state senator to a federal prisoner, serving 18 months for a range of charges like wire fraud and obstruction of justice from two separate cases. He had his hands full defending himself in federal court for years, but while both of his other cases were playing out, he had another one waiting in the wings. Back in June of 2019, when he was a normal state senator, with a few ethics violations, he got into trouble for stealing a gun from an elderly constituent. Here's Tim Dunn from the Boston Herald.

25:59He then got caught up in these pretty ridiculous gun charges where he had stolen a firearm from an elderly person and then lied about it to police when he was questioned. The details on why he would do this are pretty unclear. But the facts are that Tran used his position as a trusted elected official to convince an elderly woman to sell him her late husband's gun collection, which consisted of eight firearms. He was offering her around$1 ,500. But after striking the deal, the woman regretted the sale and asked for them back. Like a normal person, Tran returned the firearms. But what he did after that was not normal.

26:50The next day, he broke into her house early in the morning when she was home alone, forced her to give him the key to her gun safe, and stole her husband's Colt.45 while she hid in the bedroom. Scared and shaken up, the woman called the police. When questioned, Tran gave multiple conflicting stories about the event. His stories were so convoluted and confusing that it seemed as though he was intentionally trying to confuse the cops. Here's Matt Stout from the Boston Globe.

27:24Dean Tran:As he went through that case, I think that was the question of why do this? And, you know, he denied it. I mean, even when I think he was questioned by, you know, police over it, it was among the charges that he faced for misleading investigators, because even then he claimed that the guns were actually his and that it's the woman who should write him the apology in a letter to the editor for helping her recover something sentimental. I mean, again, there's a lot of contradictions in what he told police. Although the crime was committed in 2019, Tran was charged for this crime in 2022. If you're trying to figure out the timeline, these charges would have come after he was found guilty by the Senate Ethics Committee for campaign violations and after he lost re-election in the state Senate.