Repeated efforts to reach Nuyen, who owns and manages 15 low-income rental properties here and in Maryland, for comment were unsuccessful and he did not return phone messages. According to reports, he denies any wrongdoing. An indictment is not a finding of guilt, but a finding by a grand jury that enough evidence exists to bring a case to trial.

According to the indictment, in September 1998 the Department of Housing and Urban Development contacted Nuyen as part of a federal push to enforce the provision of the Lead Hazard Reduction Act that requires landlords to tell tenants, before they sign a lease, about the hazards of lead-based paint. Under the law, landlords must give tenants an EPA pamphlet detailing lead hazards and ways to minimize the dangers to children. The law also requires landlords to document their compliance with the law by keeping tenants' signatures on file.

The indictment charges that Nuyen gave HUD backdated forms containing "false, fictitious and fraudulent statements" after he was unable to produce records showing he had complied with the tenant-notification requirement. The indictment alleges he backdated his signatures and tenants' signatures on disclosure forms, that he told his building managers to have tenants sign and backdate forms and gave HUD the forms without admitting that some tenant signatures had actually been written in by building managers. The indictment also charges that he returned notification forms to HUD claiming he had told tenants he didn't have any information about lead paint or lead-based paint hazards at 4120 14th St. NW, even though he had been issued lead paint warnings about the property from Washington, DC local government.