MINNEAPOLIS -- A California woman is facing charges after allegedly embezzling more than $1 million from her Minnesota-based employer.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office says on Monday a federal grand jury indicted 47-year-old Mai Houa Xiong on charges related to wire fraud, identity theft, and filing false tax returns in regards to the embezzlement scheme.

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According to court documents, Xiong worked as a financial manager for a Minneapolis company that provided financial services to homeowner’s associations in the Twins Cities. Records show her job included bookkeeping and allowed her access to the financials, bank accounts, vendor and contractor payments, and other sensitive bookkeeping information of the homeowner’s associations working with the company.

Court documents show between February 2015 and February 2022, Xiong embezzled money from those accounts in the form of HOA fees paid by residents to the associations that were supposed to cover maintenance, construction, and other costs. Records show she transferred money directly from the HOA bank accounts into her personal accounts by labeling them as legitimate expenses and also made cash withdrawals from the accounts using her signatory authority.

According to the documents, Xiong was fired by the property management company in July 2021 but continued to take money out of the HOA accounts and collected unemployment insurance even after finding another job.

She faces five counts of wire fraud, one count of aggravated identity theft, four counts of making and subscribing a false return, and one count of failure to file an individual return. She will return to court at a later date.

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