Ex-FBI agent is sentenced to 30 years for invasion-style robbery plan

LOS ANGELES
— A former FBI agent convicted of planning an invasion-style robbery of
what he thought was a drug stash house containing a half-million
dollars in cash was sentenced to 30 years in prison Monday by a federal
judge in Santa Ana.

Ex-agent Vo Duong Tran, 42, and his accomplice, Yu Sung Park,
36, were arrested in possession of bulletproof vests, a machine gun,
other weapons, silencers and hundreds of rounds of ammunition that they
intended to use to rob the supposed drug house in Orange County’s Fountain Valley, a jury found.

In reality, the “stash house” did not exist. It was
created as part of a law enforcement sting operation. During the probe,
Tran and Park were secretly recorded planning the details of the
would-be caper with an undercover federal agent and an informant.

Tran and Park told the agent and informant to use
one of the drug dealers inside the house as a “human shield” to clear
the location and to shoot anyone who did not follow instructions.

In a reference to the machine gun, Tran, an 11-year
FBI veteran, boasted that he could “take out five cops in a second” if
any officers responded to the scene during the robbery, according to
court papers.

Recordings of those and other statements were played for jurors during a month-long trial before U.S. District Judge Andrew J. Guilford last year.

Tran’s attorney, Alex R. Kessel,
argued at trial that despite having been fired by the FBI years
earlier, Tran remained loyal to law enforcement. He said Tran was only
pretending to be a criminal because he was conducting his own
undercover investigation and planned to go to authorities with the
results.

The jury, which deliberated for one day, rejected
that explanation. Jurors found Tran and Park guilty of conspiracy to
obstruct commerce by robbery, interstate travel to commit a crime with
a firearm and possession of a machine gun.

Though they were not charged with any actual
robberies, both Tran and Park admitted having committed “similar
home-invasion style robberies of drug dealers in the past,” according
to a sentencing memorandum filed by prosecutors.

Tran was hired by the FBI in 1992 and assigned to the Chicago
field office. He was suspended nine years later after admitting to a
bureau security officer that he attempted to bribe a Vietnamese
official for information while on a personal trip to Vietnam, according to court records unrelated to the California case. While on suspension, he was charged by prosecutors in Illinois
with impersonating a peace officer after he allegedly identified
himself as an FBI agent to a family he said was being targeted for a
home invasion robbery. He was acquitted of those charges in court.

Tran was fired from the FBI in April 2003. A little more than a year later he was indicted by federal prosecutors in Atlanta on charges that he obtained firearms and silencers by falsely stating that he was a resident of Georgia
and that he needed the items in connection with his work for the FBI.
The government dismissed the case after a judge ruled that evidence
seized from Tran’s apartment in Chicago was inadmissible.

In the case for which he was sentenced Monday, Tran traveled from his home in Louisiana to Southern California
to commit the planned robbery. He and Park, who was also sentenced to a
30-year prison term, were arrested by an FBI SWAT team in July 2008 in the parking lot of an Orange County hotel.

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(c) 2010, Los Angeles Times.

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