BULLETIN: Thanh Viet Jeremy Cao Pleads Guilty In False Liens Case; Ponzi Schemer Admits He Filed 22 Bogus Claims For Hundreds Of Millions Of Dollars Against Public Officials

BULLETIN: Thanh Viet Jeremy Cao, the California Ponzi schemer sentenced last month to 30 years in federal prison and ordered to pay $12.4 million in restitution, has pleaded guilty in a separate fraud case.

Federal prosecutors in Nevada alleged last year that Cao filed nearly two dozen bogus liens against SEC attorneys, federal judges, federal magistrate judges, a U.S. Attorney, assistant U.S. Attorneys, U.S. Secret Service special agents and special agents of the IRS.

In an agreement with prosecutors, Cao pleaded guilty today to six counts of filing false liens against public officials. He admitted he filed 22 false liens in all, the Justice Department, the IRS and the Office of the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration said.

The bizarre Cao saga began in 2007, when the SEC named him a defendant in a fraud lawsuit. At the time, Cao also was under criminal investigation by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of California and the Secret Service for the same fraud scheme — and by the IRS for a tax scheme.

Cao went on a lien-filing spree in retaliation for the various investigations, claiming in Nevada that various public officials were “debtors” who owed him sums ranging from $25 million to $300 million, according to records.

Sentencing in the false-liens case is scheduled for Sept. 21 in Las Vegas.

Cao’s 30-year prison sentence in the Ponzi case was one of the longest sentences in the history of federal white-collar prosecutions in Southern California.

To keep victims in a state of terror, Cao said he knew people who previously had “chopped up” a baby in front of the baby’s parents, and then killed the baby’s mother, prosecutors said.

Those threats led to an extortion and firearms case brought by the state of California.

And Cao dialed up the terror by referencing an “assassination” and “fatal car accident.” When he was arrested, “he possessed a loaded firearm, and body armor and other firearms were found at his residence,” prosecutors said.

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3 Responses to “BULLETIN: Thanh Viet Jeremy Cao Pleads Guilty In False Liens Case; Ponzi Schemer Admits He Filed 22 Bogus Claims For Hundreds Of Millions Of Dollars Against Public Officials”

  1. Just guessing, but, when the target of your false liens is an assortment of “SEC attorneys, federal judges, federal magistrate judges, a US attorney, US assistant attorneys,US secret service special agents and IRS special agents” it doesn’t give your defense lawyer much wriggle room WRT mounting a defense, does it ???

    This will undoubtedly be put into the “What on earth were they thinking” or “You don’t tug on superman’s cape. You don’t spit into the wind. You don’t pull the mask of the ol’ lone ranger” files

  2. Speaking of Superman. My favorite all-time part of the TV show was when Superman would stand there when the bad guys were shooting at him with bullets bouncing off his chest; but would duck when they threw the gun at him. Guess his head was invincible, so why not shoot him in the head? Sorry, could not resist. Opps almost forgot the ! for Patrick since he loves them so much!!

  3. […] 2011, California Ponzi schemer Thanh Viet Jeremy Cao pleaded gulity to federal charges in Nevada that he filed false liens against public officials. […]