SANTA ANA, California
A Riverside County woman who participated in a scheme that used stolen identities to fraudulently apply for just over $2.8 million in unemployment insurance (UI) benefits from the California Employment Development Department (EDD) has been sentenced to three years and five months in federal prison, the Justice Department announced Tuesday.
U.S. District Judge Cormac J. Carney handed down a sentence on Monday to Sasha Lizette Jimenez, 26, who was formerly of Placentia and now resides in Riverside County.
In total, the fraud scheme caused the issuance of at least $2.8 million in fraudulent unemployment benefits, which were disbursed via EDD debit accounts, and at least $2,304,203 was withdrawn from those accounts.
“[B]ank records show that in 2020, an EDD card in the name of victim S.S. was used to purchase luxury jewelry from Peter Marco, a Beverly Hills jewelry business frequented by [Jimenez],” prosecutors noted in a sentencing memorandum.
In addition to the prison term, Judge Carney ordered Jimenez to pay the EDD $2.3 million in restitution.
Jimenez pleaded guilty on May 22 to one count of conspiracy to commit bank fraud and admitted that she fraudulently obtained UI benefits from the EDD, including Pandemic Unemployment Assistance benefits intended for individuals who were unemployed because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
As part of the scheme that started at the beginning of the pandemic and ran for about two years, Jimenez and her co-conspirators obtained stolen personal identifying information (PII)—sometimes from the dark web—and used those stolen identities to apply for UI benefits.
The PII was stolen from victims who did not live in California, were deceased, or were otherwise not eligible for UI benefits, including pandemic benefits.
In her plea agreement, Jimenez also admitted participating in a separate check fraud scheme orchestrated by her boyfriend, Meshach Samuels, 26, of Placentia.
Samuels, who also participated in the EDD fraud scheme, was sentenced in October to 90 months in federal prison.
The Los Angeles El Camino Real Financial Crimes Task Force, a multi-agency task force under the direction of Homeland Security Investigations that includes federal and state investigators interested in financial crimes in Southern California, investigated this case.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Rachel N. Agress of the International Narcotics, Money Laundering, and Racketeering Section prosecuted this case.
Anyone with information about allegations of fraud involving COVID-19 can report it by calling the Department of Justice’s National Center for Disaster Fraud Hotline at (866) 720-5721 or via the NCDF Web Complaint Form at: https://www.justice.gov/disaster-fraud/ncdf-disaster-complaint-form.