Dean Tran, a former state senator already serving an 18-month sentence on a federal fraud conviction, pleaded guilty Monday in state court on charges he stole a gun from an elderly constituent who had contacted him for help after her husband died.
A Worcester County judge sentenced Tran to a six-month sentence on charges including larceny and misleading police, which he’ll serve concurrently with his federal sentence, according to Attorney General Andrea Campbell’s office, which prosecuted the case.
Tran is currently housed at FMC Devens, a federal facility in Ayer, according to a federal database.
Michael Gillis, Tran’s attorney, said in a statement Tuesday that Tran was looking “forward to defending himself” in court, but that his decision to plead guilty to some, but not all, of the charges he faced was “solely family based.”
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“The Commonwealth’s offer to dismiss half the charges and seek no additional time in jail made pleading out a no brainer,” Gillis said.
Tran wrote in a letter submitted last month in his open federal case that he is struggling with physical and mental health problems. He said his “oral hygiene is poor,” the food portions he receives are “insufficient” at FMC Devens, and that the conditions are “not sufficient for human life.”
“In these conditions, I cannot mount a defense to the charges against me,” he wrote in a six-page, handwritten affidavit. “My health is deteriorating. ... I find difficulty in writing even a short letter. I am in a haze and often can’t think straight.”
A Fitchburg Republican, Tran served in the state Legislature from 2017 to January 2021, and unsuccessfully ran for Congress in 2022 against US Representative Lori Trahan, a Westford Democrat.
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He’s faced a litany of criminal cases since. Tran was indicted on the gun charges months before the 2022 election, and he still has an open criminal case in Suffolk County, where he’s accused of violating the state ethics law by using members of his legislative staff to campaign for him during his 2018 and 2020 reelection campaigns.
In September, a federal jury found Tran guilty of fraudulently collecting about $30,000 in unemployment benefits during the pandemic and failing to report all of his income to the Internal Revenue Service.
He is also awaiting trial in a separate federal case where prosecutors charged him and his sister with obstruction of justice and making false statements as part of a related scheme to collect pandemic unemployment benefits.
In the gun case, prosecutors said a 77-year-old constituent contacted Tran in 2019, while he was a state senator, asking for help with “personal and paperwork issues” following the death of her husband.
Instead, prosecutors said, Tran convinced her to give him at least eight of her late husband’s guns, made her sign a document, and paid her $1,500 in cash.
When the woman’s family and friends demanded Tran return the guns, he did, but only to return early in the morning, when he “pushed” his way into the home, intimidated the woman into giving him the key to his husband’s gun safe, and stole a Colt .45 handgun while the woman hid in her bedroom, prosecutors said.
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The gun was returned at a later date. Tran then allegedly misled State Police investigators, claiming that the guns were actually his, and that the woman should write him an apology letter and a “letter to the editor thanking him for helping her recover a sentimental item.”
When he was charged, Tran called the allegations “categorically false” and accused then-attorney general Maura Healey of “partisan corruption” for pursuing the case while she ran for governor.
Healey ultimately won the governor’s office that fall.
Matt Stout can be reached at