Georgia Woman Sentenced for $30 Million COVID-19 Unemployment Benefit Scam

The Department of Justice seal on a lectern ahead of a news conference in Washington on Nov. 28, 2018. Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images

A woman from Vienna, Georgia, has been sentenced to 12 years in prison for taking part in a scheme to scam the Georgia Department of Labor (GaDOL) out of tens of millions of state benefits aimed at helping unemployed people during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Tyshion Nautese Hicks, 32, and co-conspirators carried out a scheme that resulted in “more than 5,000 fraudulent unemployment insurance (UI) claims to be filed with the GaDOL, resulting in at least $30 million in stolen benefits,” the Department of Justice (DOJ) said in an Oct. 25 statement.

“[This was] one of the largest COVID fraud schemes ever prosecuted,” Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Nicole M. Argentieri said.

To execute the scheme, scammers “created fictitious employers and fabricated lists of purported employees using personally identifiable information from thousands of identity theft victims and filed fraudulent unemployment insurance claims on the GaDOL website.”

The personal information was obtained by various means, including paying a worker at a health care and hospital network in Atlanta to obtain patient data from the hospital’s database. The criminals also purchased personally identifiable information from online sources.

Using the information, scammers were able to secure UI funds, which were disbursed through prepaid debit cards sent by mail to addresses of their choice. Hicks also paid a local USPS carrier to unlawfully divert mail that contained debit cards loaded with more than $512,000 in fraudulent unemployment insurance proceeds.

In February, she pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit mail fraud and one count of aggravated identity theft. Seven of her co-conspirators had earlier pleaded guilty or had been sentenced.

“Hicks chose to commit fraud, further depleting limited funds designated to help individuals struggling to survive during the pandemic,” Special Agent in Charge Frederick Houston of the Secret Service Atlanta Field Office said. “She and her co-conspirators also stole the personally identifiable information, caring only about self-enrichment, not the lives adversely affected. ... We will continue to work with our local, state, and federal law enforcement partners to prosecute those who abuse these programs.”

Hicks’s 12-year sentence includes three years of supervised release. She must also pay restitution, with the amount to be determined at a later date.

The sentence includes a three-year term that Hicks was previously given for a separate charge of illegally possessing a machine gun.

Congress created three new programs during the COVID-19 pandemic to ensure that individuals who lost their jobs because of the shutdowns were covered by UI benefits.

These programs combined issued almost $655 billion in benefits, according to pandemicoversight.gov, which oversees more than $5 trillion worth of COVID-19 programs and spending.

“While the total amount of fraud is unknown, since April 2021, 23 states have reported estimates that total $60.4 billion,” the website reads.

A September 2023 report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) estimated the total amount of fraud in UI programs during the COVID-19 pandemic to be between $100 billion and $135 billion, making up between 11 percent and 15 percent of the unemployment insurance benefits paid in this period.

The GAO noted that after Congress created temporary UI initiatives, the “unprecedented demand for benefits and need to quickly implement the new programs” increased the potential for fraud.

Subsequently, the GAO added unemployment insurance to its “High Risk List,” which details government programs that are “vulnerable to waste, fraud, abuse, or mismanagement, or in need of transformation.”

In 2021, Attorney General Merrick Garland established the COVID-19 Fraud Enforcement Task Force to use the resources of the DOJ and other agencies to counter COVID-19 pandemic-related fraud. The task force also targets other crimes related to COVID-19 pandemic relief.

In April, the DOJ revealed that more than 3,500 individuals have been charged with federal crimes for trying to “exploit the government’s pandemic response for their personal gain.”

A National Unemployment Insurance Fraud Task Force was established in 2021 to target those who exploit pandemic relief programs.