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Tampa, FL – United States Attorney Roger B. Handberg announces the results achieved by the Middle District of Florida’s efforts to combat fraud related to COVID-19. Those efforts have included complementary actions by the United States Attorney’s Office’s (USAO-MDFL) Criminal, Asset Recovery, Appellate, and Civil Divisions, along with federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies.

Makiah Miles, 30, of Compton, and Apryl Weston, 51, of Santa Maria, pleaded guilty today to conspiring to commit mail fraud for submitting fraudulent unemployment insurance claims to the California Employment Development Department (EDD) in the names of inmates.

SALT LAKE CITY, Utah – An indictment was unsealed after a California man was arrested and is scheduled to appear in a Salt Lake City federal courthouse. The eight count indictment charges the defendant for unlawfully collecting unemployment insurance during COVID-19 from California while living and working in Utah. He also allegedly assisted others in committing the same acts for a cut of their unemployment insurance funds administered under the CARES Act.

Terence Aubrey Larker, 37, of Las Vegas, previously of Sacramento, was sentenced Tuesday to four years and 10 months in prison for mail fraud and aggravated identity theft in a scheme to defraud the Unemployment Insurance benefit program during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Federal inmates Jason Haddox, age 40, and Jonathan Henry, age 32, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud and mail fraud, and Henry also pleaded guilty to aggravated identity theft, relating to the submission of fraudulent CARES Act unemployment insurance benefits. The Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (“CARES”) Act was a federal law enacted in March 2020 to provide emergency financial assistance to Americans suffering from the economic effects caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

A Riverside County man was sentenced today to 68 months in federal prison for orchestrating a scheme to obtain more than $2.1 million in pandemic-related unemployment insurance (UI) benefits by filing fraudulent applications claiming, among other things, that the claimants were salon and barbershop workers rendered jobless by the COVID-19 pandemic.

ROBERT CARTER engaged in a scheme to fraudulently obtain more than $1 million in unemployment insurance funds during the Covid-19 pandemic.

A Concord, California, woman was sentenced today to 18 years in prison for her leading role in a conspiracy to defraud at least five states of more than $3.5 million in pandemic-related unemployment insurance benefits.