Former director of sports marketing at Microsoft sentenced to 28 months in prison for wire fraud

What you need to know

  • Jeff Tran, former director of sports marketing at Microsoft, sentenced to 28 months in prison for wire fraud.
  • Tran pleaded guilty to attempting to steal more than $1.5 million from his former employer.
  • His crimes included using stolen Super Bowl tickets and fake invoices.

Jeff Tran, former director of sports marketing at Microsoft, has been sentenced to 28 months in prison for wire fraud (via GeekWire). The sentence came at the U.S. District Court in Seattle last Friday. In addition to his prison sentence, Tran was fined $50,000 by Chief U.S. District Judge Recardo Martinez.

In the guilty plea, it's stated that Tran sold 75 game tickets and 99 tailgate tickets for $250,000 of profit during the 2016 and 2017 Super Bowl events. The tickets were intended to be distributed to Microsoft employees.

Tran also issued fake invoices worth $1,445,000 combined. The first invoice was wired to Tran's bank account, and the second invoice was attempted to be paid into a company controlled by Tran called Tranmerica, Inc.

Tran was in charge of Microsoft's promotional relationship with the NFL that includes teams using Surface tablets.

Tran has paid back $1,036,800 to Microsoft to cover losses. He was originally indicted on five counts of wire fraud in October, but four of them were dropped as part of the deal.

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Sean Endicott
News Writer and apps editor

Sean Endicott brings nearly a decade of experience covering Microsoft and Windows news to Windows Central. He joined our team in 2017 as an app reviewer and now heads up our day-to-day news coverage. If you have a news tip or an app to review, hit him up at sean.endicott@futurenet.com.