Sean Edin Talaee, 62, of Glendale, has pleaded guilty to a brazen $2.8 million fraud scheme that gutted his employer, Printograph, Inc., a Burbank-based commercial printing firm operating as GotPrint.com. Talaee, who served as the company’s controller, admitted to mail fraud and filing a false income tax return, charges stemming from a multi-year embezzlement operation that exploited his access to tax payments and IRS processing systems.
Between October 2015 and June 2018, Talaee oversaw Printograph’s accounting and tax obligations, including the submission of periodic estimated tax payments. Each payment required a check signed by the company’s president and sole owner. Instead of submitting the payments under the company’s name, Talaee repeatedly diverted funds by filling out IRS voucher forms with his own personal taxpayer information—effectively redirecting company money into his own tax account.
On at least eight occasions, Talaee used his position to intercept company checks and reroute them to himself through the IRS. The agency, unaware of the deception, credited the $2.8 million in corporate tax payments directly to Talaee’s account. By falsely claiming these payments as his own, he triggered tax refunds totaling $2,778,994 across 2015, 2016, and 2017—money that never belonged to him.
The stolen funds were never reported as income. Talaee filed tax returns that omitted the embezzled sums, resulting in a federal tax loss of $740,085. The fraud was not merely a theft from his employer—it was a calculated laundering of stolen money through the U.S. tax system, weaponizing IRS procedures to legitimize ill-gotten gains.
IRS Criminal Investigation and the Federal Bureau of Investigation led the probe, unraveling a scheme that relied on trust, authority, and bureaucratic blind spots. Assistant United States Attorney Alexander Wyman, of the Major Frauds Section, is prosecuting the case, which has laid bare the vulnerabilities within corporate financial oversight.
U.S. District Judge Otis D. Wright II has scheduled Talaee’s sentencing for August 19. He faces a statutory maximum of 23 years in federal prison—a potential fall from corporate executive to federal inmate, all for a crime built on paperwork, deception, and stolen trust.
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Key Facts
- State: California
- Agency: DOJ USAO
- Category: Fraud & Financial Crimes
- Source: Official Source ↗
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