Employees work on Amazon’s campus in Seattle. (Courtesy Amazon)
A Denver woman who ran Amazon’s onboarding program for executives has been sentenced to 12 months in prison after admittedly robbing that program of nearly $500,000.
Tiffany Vo, 37, was also ordered to spend three years on probation and pay back $483,394 during a hearing Wednesday morning in the courtroom of U.S. District Judge Kato Crews. She now has until noon on Jan. 3 to surrender to the U.S. Bureau of Prisons.
“We appreciate the support of the authorities in bringing this matter to closure,” said Amazon spokesperson Zoe Hoffmann, “and have worked closely with them throughout the process.”
Vo ran “Escape Velocity,” a three-day onboarding event in Seattle that includes catered meals, happy hours and trainings. As a coordinator of the event, Vo would initially pay for the catering and booze, then be reimbursed by Amazon, according to Vo’s plea agreement.
After Escape Velocity became a virtual event in spring 2020, there was no need for catering or happy hours. But Vo continued requesting reimbursement from Amazon and was paid $243,000 for food never bought, $56,000 for drinks never ordered and $52,000 for UberEats lunch vouchers that she never purchased, she admitted in that plea agreement.
When the FBI contacted the caterer and happy hour location in Seattle that Vo claimed to have used, those companies confirmed they hadn’t worked with Amazon since the pandemic began. It was Amazon that first investigated Vo, according to an FBI agent’s affidavit.
“On June 6, 2022, members of Amazon’s business conduct and ethics team, travel and expense reimbursement audit team, and human resources team participated in an interview of Vo,” the affidavit from a Denver-based agent says. “Vo initially denied the allegations and claimed the expenses were legitimate. However, upon being shown the evidence, Vo eventually admitted to submitting fictitious and fraudulent expenses … Vo was subsequently terminated.”
She was then charged April 9 with one count of wire fraud and almost immediately pleaded guilty. Around that same time, the government seized her 2020 Range Rover and a handful of Chanel handbags, believing that Vo bought them to launder some of the stolen money.
“White collar crimes like this one cause financial impact to not just corporate entities, but to consumers and taxpayers,” Matt Kirsch, Colorado’s acting U.S. attorney, said in a statement.
Ahead of Wednesday’s sentencing, the U.S. Attorney’s Office argued that Vo’s penalty should be enhanced because her fraud was sophisticated and went on for more than a year.
“The defendant used a variety of different techniques to submit expenses to Amazon, reflecting the sophistication of the offense. She fabricated invoices to three different companies. For these invoices, the defendant appears to have taken old, legitimate receipts and falsified them by changing dates, quantities and total amounts,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Rebecca Weber wrote.
Vo’s lawyer, Jason Schall at Bowlin & Schall in Greenwood Village, pushed back on that.
“Ms. Vo’s offense was successful, but not sophisticated,” he wrote in response to Weber.
“Breaking down the ways Ms. Vo committed fraud shows that her actions, viewed as a whole, were not especially complex or especially intricate. Ms. Vo purloined money from her employer in two ways: abusing her company-issued credit card to make personal purchases, and modifying existing invoices and submitting them for reimbursement,” Schall said.
He called his client’s crime “baseline fraud” that didn’t use fictitious entities, shell corporations or offshore accounts. The volume of the false transactions “only goes to show that the fraud was successful, and that Ms. Vo continued to do it, not that the means were especially complex.” He referred to it as “a crime of opportunity borne by the pandemic’s loosened oversight.”
“Simply put,” Vo’s attorney asked, “what could be a less sophisticated form of wire fraud?”
Employees work on Amazon’s campus in Seattle. (Courtesy Amazon)
A Denver woman who ran Amazon’s onboarding program for executives has been sentenced to 12 months in prison after admittedly robbing that program of nearly $500,000.
Tiffany Vo, 37, was also ordered to spend three years on probation and pay back $483,394 during a hearing Wednesday morning in the courtroom of U.S. District Judge Kato Crews. She now has until noon on Jan. 3 to surrender to the U.S. Bureau of Prisons.
“We appreciate the support of the authorities in bringing this matter to closure,” said Amazon spokesperson Zoe Hoffmann, “and have worked closely with them throughout the process.”
Vo ran “Escape Velocity,” a three-day onboarding event in Seattle that includes catered meals, happy hours and trainings. As a coordinator of the event, Vo would initially pay for the catering and booze, then be reimbursed by Amazon, according to Vo’s plea agreement.
After Escape Velocity became a virtual event in spring 2020, there was no need for catering or happy hours. But Vo continued requesting reimbursement from Amazon and was paid $243,000 for food never bought, $56,000 for drinks never ordered and $52,000 for UberEats lunch vouchers that she never purchased, she admitted in that plea agreement.
When the FBI contacted the caterer and happy hour location in Seattle that Vo claimed to have used, those companies confirmed they hadn’t worked with Amazon since the pandemic began. It was Amazon that first investigated Vo, according to an FBI agent’s affidavit.
“On June 6, 2022, members of Amazon’s business conduct and ethics team, travel and expense reimbursement audit team, and human resources team participated in an interview of Vo,” the affidavit from a Denver-based agent says. “Vo initially denied the allegations and claimed the expenses were legitimate. However, upon being shown the evidence, Vo eventually admitted to submitting fictitious and fraudulent expenses … Vo was subsequently terminated.”
She was then charged April 9 with one count of wire fraud and almost immediately pleaded guilty. Around that same time, the government seized her 2020 Range Rover and a handful of Chanel handbags, believing that Vo bought them to launder some of the stolen money.
“White collar crimes like this one cause financial impact to not just corporate entities, but to consumers and taxpayers,” Matt Kirsch, Colorado’s acting U.S. attorney, said in a statement.
Ahead of Wednesday’s sentencing, the U.S. Attorney’s Office argued that Vo’s penalty should be enhanced because her fraud was sophisticated and went on for more than a year.
“The defendant used a variety of different techniques to submit expenses to Amazon, reflecting the sophistication of the offense. She fabricated invoices to three different companies. For these invoices, the defendant appears to have taken old, legitimate receipts and falsified them by changing dates, quantities and total amounts,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Rebecca Weber wrote.
Vo’s lawyer, Jason Schall at Bowlin & Schall in Greenwood Village, pushed back on that.
“Ms. Vo’s offense was successful, but not sophisticated,” he wrote in response to Weber.
“Breaking down the ways Ms. Vo committed fraud shows that her actions, viewed as a whole, were not especially complex or especially intricate. Ms. Vo purloined money from her employer in two ways: abusing her company-issued credit card to make personal purchases, and modifying existing invoices and submitting them for reimbursement,” Schall said.
He called his client’s crime “baseline fraud” that didn’t use fictitious entities, shell corporations or offshore accounts. The volume of the false transactions “only goes to show that the fraud was successful, and that Ms. Vo continued to do it, not that the means were especially complex.” He referred to it as “a crime of opportunity borne by the pandemic’s loosened oversight.”
“Simply put,” Vo’s attorney asked, “what could be a less sophisticated form of wire fraud?”
