A husband and wife who owned and operated hair salons in Southern California were sentenced to prison for failing to pay payroll taxes.
John D. Pham and Annya A. Nguyen, both of Laguna Niguel, operated hair salons under the Fantastic Sams name at various times since 1985 in the cities of Orange, Laguna Niguel, Aliso Viejo, and Rancho Santa Margarita.
On Oct. 1, Pham was sentenced to serve 37 months in prison and three years of supervised release. He had previously pleaded guilty to a charge that he had willfully failed to account for and pay income and Social Security taxes withheld from the wages of employees of one of the corporations involved in the scheme. He admitted that he and his wife had incorporated 10 companies, all of which had failed to pay payroll taxes from 1996 through 2004.
On Sept. 4, Nguyen was sentenced to serve five months in prison and three years of supervised release. She previously had pleaded guilty to a charge that she had conspired with Pham to defraud the United States by impeding the Internal Revenue Service in the collection of taxes. She admitted that the conspiracy spanned a period of at least eight years and involved a loss to the government of over $770,000 of payroll taxes. Nguyen also admitted that she failed to pay more than $80,000 of her federal income tax liabilities during the same time period.
Nguyen and Pham were also accused of diverting assets from some of the corporations they controlled to their own personal benefit. Both were ordered to jointly pay restitution of $629,105 to the IRS.
