SACRAMENTO, Calif.
Officials stated Thursday that U.S. District Judge John A. Mendez sentenced Kaymeisha Keyes, 33, of Tracy, to nine years in prison for wire fraud and aggravated identity theft in a scheme to defraud the unemployment insurance benefit program during the COVID-19 pandemic.
According to court documents, Keyes executed a scheme to defraud the California Employment Development Department (EDD) between April 2020 and August 2021.
The judge also ordered Keyes to pay $1,116,683 in restitution.
She filed more than 70 fraudulent unemployment benefit claims with EDD, seeking Pandemic Unemployment Assistance and other benefits under the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act.
During the scheme, Keyes collected personally identifiable information of numerous individuals — including names, birth dates, and Social Security numbers — and used their identities to file fraudulent unemployment insurance claims.
The filings represented, among other things, that the claimants had recently lost employment or were unable to find employment due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
These unemployment insurance claims were fraudulent because, for example, the claimants were not unemployed, they were not eligible for California unemployment insurance benefits, or Keyes did not have the authority to file claims on their behalf.
Since at least October 2021, EDD has partnered with ID.me, a private company that verifies claimants’ IDs, to implement a system for confirming claimant identities before processing unemployment insurance claims.
In executing this fraudulent scheme, Keyes submitted false information to ID.me that allowed fake and stolen identities to be verified.
This false information included images of fake driver’s licenses that contained photos of Keyes and co-schemers and the names of the purported claimants. She also submitted photos of herself and co-schemers that were used to verify the photos on the fake driver’s licenses.
Once these false identities were verified, Keyes filed the fraudulent unemployment insurance claims with EDD under the same identities.
In the fraudulent unemployment insurance applications, Keyes requested that the unemployment insurance benefits be mailed to various addresses under her control, including her residence in Tracy.
EDD approved dozens of fraudulent claims and authorized Bank of America to mail out EDD debit cards containing unemployment insurance benefits. Keyes then activated the EDD debit cards and spent the benefits on herself.
The scheme sought over $2 million in unemployment insurance benefits and caused EDD and the United States to incur actual losses exceeding $1.1 million.