The preliminary hearing didn’t last long, maybe a few minutes, followed by some time for paperwork.
After that, Phuong Nguyen-Davis and his lawyer left the Manchester District Courthouse and returned to their cars on November 10.
They left 20 felony counts outstanding on Nguyen-Davis: One count of theft and 19 counts of unlawful device access stem from accusations that she defrauded her former employer of more than $915,000.
A similar case is expected to be filed in Maryland. Meanwhile, court records show Nguyen-Davis owes more than $150,000 in restitution for three similar cases over the past decade.
Inside the courthouse, two business owners were frustrated.
“You know, that’s five times, five different companies,” Jim Vaughn said.
Vaughn leads Advanced Fluid Systems based in Hellam Township, where Nguyen-Davis worked until May. The company, with Vaughn as chairman, is at the heart of the ongoing criminal case.
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The five companies he mentioned are presumably AFS, an aerospace company Maryland company that hired Nguyen-Davis after leaving AFS this year, and three other companies she stole back to back a decade ago.
Weaver and Sons Excavation in Wrightsville was one of them.
The company lost at least $14,705 from checks forged by Nguyen-Davis while working there in 2013, according to charging documents.
Owner Mark Weaver fumed over the pattern of flights.
“She is a diabolical and vicious predator. She attacks people’s weaknesses. She does it wherever she goes,” he said after the Nov. 10 hearing. “It came when I was going through a rough patch and started flying within days.”
Nguyen-Davis, 56, and his attorney, Sean Quinlan, did not respond to requests for comment.
The charges in the current case against her were filed in August following a investigation into Vaughn’s allegations flight at AFS.
Court documents say she posted $15,000 bond with sureties in September. The bond was changed after the hearing to include supervised terms, as prosecutors expect the other case in Maryland to be filed soon.
Vaughn told Hellam Township police that he hired Nguyen-Davis in January 2017 as an accounts payable/human resources staff.
At the end of May this year, a bank bill became a thread he pulled, and he said he found unauthorized charges to the company’s credit cards, including several that she allegedly opened without authorization. Some bore the name Vaughn, and at least one bore another name used by Nguyen-Davis: Fawn Davis, according to police.
As AFS officials and a detective pulled the wires, they found charges on 19 credit cards, including Home Depot accounts. The total amount of AFS’s unauthorized transactions, according to billing documents, was $915,045.
About half of that amount, $478,357, went directly to a merchant called D&G Serviced. Police said Nguyen-Davis started the business using her names and the name of Derrick Gilliam, a man with whom she is believed to have a relationship.
Gilliam has not been charged in the case, according to court records.
Investigators allege Nguyen-Davis used AFS cards to “pay” D&G Serviced, with the money going to at least two attached bank accounts. Then she allegedly paid the credit card bills with company money, according to billing documents.
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Alleged transactions uncovered by police included those for thefts, car rentals, appliances, groceries, medical appointments and apparently home electricity bills.
Vaughn also accused Nguyen-Davis of spending $15,000 on a family weekend at a West Virginia resort while speaking at the courthouse.
Days after the first wire was pulled about the unauthorized card transactions, Vaughn told police she wrote a note saying she was taking a vacation day on the Friday before Memorial Day. She then allegedly took her employee files and left, showing charging documents.
Some card charges continued through June while the investigation was ongoing, police said.
Vaughn, 84, expressed disappointment at the massive breach of trust.
“With my generation, your handshake was good. I was tricked by a nice middle-aged lady who was divorced, I tried to help her and didn’t pay attention to what was going on,’ he told The Dispatch.
A month after leaving AFS, she was hired on June 27 as the new business manager at Aerolab in Jessup, Maryland.
CEO Hareen Aparakakankanage told The Dispatch in September that he uncovered fraud at the company about a month into Nguyen-Davis’ employment. He said he found charges of nearly $1,000 for an Airbnb stay on a corporate card, then more fraudulent charges and bogus payrolls.
Several charges, he alleged, were made against a PayPal account under the name “Davis Photography”. He said Nguyen-Davis used company money to pay bills from the PayPal account.
When Aparakakankanage confronted Nguyen-Davis about the charges and wanted to settle the balance, he said she left him $1,000 in cash and disappeared. He estimated Aerolab lost between $12,000 and $14,000 from the alleged fraud.
He also reported the theft to police, and a Howard County detective confirmed an investigation was underway in September. No criminal case had been filed there on Friday.
This year’s inquests follow a series of three inquests from late 2012 to 2013, which led to charges against Nguyen-Davis, guilty pleas and convictions. The cases stemmed from allegations reported by three previous employers: Weaver Excavation, Keystone Certifications Inc. and Jacoby Plumbing.
Keystone staff made the first report. They told police in December 2012 they discovered accounting discrepancies, and a review showed Nguyen-Davis made 117 illegal transactions with fake checks between July 2010 and that December while working there. as an accountant.
The amount stolen was $137,359, police said in the charging documents.
When company staff asked to speak to Nguyen-Davis about the discrepancies, they alleged that she said she needed to get something from her office and then fled the company, according to police.
When questioned by police as part of the investigation, Nguyen-Davis admitted that she forged numerous checks and cashed them for cash, police said.
She was charged with forgery and theft in January 2013.
As this case progressed, Nguyen-Davis went to work for Weaver as an office manager in April.
In July, he reported allegations of theft to police, saying that when he confronted Nguyen-Davis about it, she admitted she had taken about $500 a week while working at the company. , according to charging documents.
Weaver gave investigators copies of 15 forged checks, dated between early May and early July 2013, for $14,705, police said.
He told The Dispatch another company called him with a tip about Nguyen-Davis.
“Another company in York County that she worked for called me and said they stole a lot of money from us too,” he said.
When police questioned Nguyen-Davis in the Weaver case, documents show she admitted to taking the money by writing fake checks to herself and Gillian.
The money was paid into a bank account in Gilliam’s name, and Nguyen-Davis told police she opened it without his knowledge, according to charging documents.
Charges of theft, forgery and unlawful access to a device were filed in that case in July as Nguyen-Davis went through the legal process in the Keystone case.
She then worked for Jacoby Plumbing in York as an accountant.
In early November 2013, Adam Jacoby and his wife reported to police that Nguyen-Davis had forged several checks and cashed them. She had written them to herself or others, according to the charging documents.
Weeks later, she apparently pleaded guilty to the first two cases, according to court records, but was not immediately sentenced.
She was charged in December with two counts of forgery in the case involving Jacoby Plumbing, to which she also pleaded guilty.
Sentences in all three cases were handed down in March 2014 when Michael Bortner, who was a judge at the time, ordered Nguyen-Davis to serve a total of 21 months to 3½ years in York County Jail, followed by eight years of probation, according to information from the three cases.
Nguyen-Davis was also ordered to pay a total of $164,522 in restitution in the three cases, according to court records figures.
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Figures show restitution amounts of $142,973 to Keystone; $20,182 to Weaver; and $2,366 to Jacoby.
Payments on restitutions, as well as costs and fees, began in 2014 and ran through the first three quarters of this year, including while she was under investigation this summer. Court records show payments of around $250 per month for each case.
But the payments apparently ended in August when Nguyen-Davis was charged in the AFS case, court records show. Those records show that after payments and adjustments, she still owes $141,774 in restitution to Keystone, $15,880 to Weaver and $1,167 to Jacoby.
The York County Clerk’s Office filed a contempt of costs lawsuit in 2019 over the unpaid amounts.
After leaving the district court in the new case, Nguyen-Davis is scheduled to appear in York County Court of Common Pleas on December 6.
A hearing in the contempt of costs case is scheduled for Dec. 16, according to court records.
– Contact Aimee Ambrose at [email protected] or on Twitter at @aimee_TYD.
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