A 29-year-old woman from Stevenson, Alabama, sentenced to 18 months in a federal criminal prosecution for defrauding the government of more than $85,000 in COVID relief funds.
Meghan Pittman gave that impression Wednesday afternoon before Judge Curtis Collier in Chattanooga Federal Court.
After his incarceration, he will be under supervision for five years.
As part of the plea agreement, Pittman pleaded guilty to wire fraud for his involvement in a scheme to defraud COVID unemployment systems in the states. In addition, Ms. Pittman was ordered to pay $85,011 in restitution to the Pennsylvania and California Workers Breakdowns. and losing $85,011 in the United States as a component of a financial judgment.
According to court documents, from June 2020 to June 2021, Ms. Pittman conspired with others to devise a scheme in which she defrauded the United States government and the governments of Tennessee, Alabama, Pennsylvania and California to obtain cash of COVID state companies. program. aid systems in the form of unemployment insurance funded through the United States government.
Specifically, he acquired private data from others and used it to fraudulently make large online claims for cash intended through states to provide unemployment insurance assistance to others affected by the national pandemic. Array Falsely claimed in the programs that the other people whose non-public data about the programs worked in those states. The states then sent debit cards to addresses in the Eastern District of Tennessee and Ms. Pittman earned a percentage of the payment from the fraudulent claim.
Prosecutors said, “The defendant is personally guilty of the fraudulent distribution of more than $85,000 in unemployment insurance funds. The scheme itself concerned the fraudulent distribution of more than $550,000 in unemployment insurance funds. “
His lawyer, Paul Bergmann, spoke of his difficult upbringing, saying he served alcohol from a bottle and lived “from pillar to post. ” He said his mother was imprisoned.
Judge Collier allowed Ms. Pittman to appear in criminal court earlier this year because she is pregnant with a child expected on Dec. 5. She also has a seven-year-old daughter.
United States Attorney Francis M. Hamilton III, Eastern District of Tennessee, Mathew Broadhurst, Special Agent in Charge, Southeast Region, United States Department of Labor, Office of Inspector General and Special Agent in Charge Joseph E. Carrico of the Federal Bureau of Investigations made the announcement. Assistant U. S. Attorney Steven Neff represented the United States.
The conviction is the result of an investigation through the Department of Labor’s Office of Inspector General and the FBI as part of the Smoky Mountain Financial Crimes Task Force.
On May 17, 2021, the Attorney General established the COVID-19 Fraud Control Task Force to mobilize the resources of the Department of Justice in partnership with government agencies in efforts to combat and save fraud related to the pandemic. The Task Force’s efforts to investigate and prosecute top domestic and foreign criminal offenders and is assisting agencies that administer aid systems to prevent fraud, among other methods, by expanding and integrating existing coordination mechanisms, identification of resources and techniques to uncover fraudulent actors and their schemes, and the percentage and utilization of data and knowledge obtained from previous law enforcement efforts. For more information on the Department’s response to the pandemic, visit https://www. justice. gov/coronavirus.
Anyone who is unsure about allegations of attempted fraud related to COVID-19 can report it by calling the Department of Justice’s National Center for Disaster Fraud (NCDF) hotline at 866-720-5721 or the online NCDF complaint form at: https://www. Arrayjustice. gov/disasterfraud/ncdf-disaster-complaint-shape.
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