Three Maryland residents have been indicted on charges that they set up a complicated scheme to cheat the state out of nearly half a million dollars in unemployment benefits.
One of the men managed to work the scam as an inmate in the Baltimore jail, federal prosecutors said in charging documents.
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Kevin Bernard Smith, 47, Sheila Denis Willis, 47, and Shekia Denise Edwards, 25, all of Baltimore, were charged last week with conspiracy to commit credit card fraud, wire fraud and aggravated identity theft.
According to the nine-count indictment, from January 2010 until May 2012, Smith, Willis and Edwards claimed $409,000 in unemployment benefits by creating fake businesses staffed with bogus employees, who they then claimed were fired and eligible for unemployment benefits.
The crew used stolen personal identification information, the indictment alleges, including names, dates of birth and social security numbers of Maryland residents.
Every three months, Smith, an inmate at the Baltimore Central Booking & Intake Center, filed fraudulent contribution reports with the Maryland Department of Labor, Licensing and Regulation, or DLLR, under the names of fictitious companies, including one called the Maryland Institute of Charity.
Employers in Maryland are required to submit quarterly reports to show employees’ wages, and employers are required to take out any unemployment taxes due to those wages.
The suspects’ quarterly filings falsely claimed that individuals, whose identities had been stolen by the trio, were eligible for thousands of dollars in unemployment insurance.
Smith, Willis and Edwards would then file unemployment insurance claims using the stolen identities, court documents said.
The state determined that the benefit claims were warranted and mailed prepaid Visa debit cards to the conspirators.
The cards were used to withdraw cash from ATMs and purchase Green Dot reloadable debit cards and money orders.
To keep the money flowing, the trio called the DLLR on a biweekly basis and requested to continue receiving unemployment benefits on the prepaid debit cards, documents said.
