Security News > 2022 > July > Jailed crooks told to cough up $600k for COVID fraud

Two Florida residents will spend years behind bars and pay more than half a million dollars for wire fraud and identity theft, among other illicit deeds, for running COVID-19 scams.

US District Judge William Jung on Friday sentenced Randy Xavier Jones, a 34-year-old man of Sarasota, Florida, to five years and one month in federal prison for wire fraud and aggravated identity theft.

US District Court Judge Steven Merryday sentenced [PDF] Rolanda Wingfield, a 39-year-old resident of Tampa, Florida to serve two years in federal prison and ordered her to pay $135,576 to the state workforce agencies that she defrauded as part of her pandemic scheme.

Or attempted to use, these fraudulently obtained debit cards to withdraw money using ATMs. In April, Wingfield pleaded guilty [PDF] to one count of access device fraud and one count of aggravated identity theft.

Both of these court cases were prosecuted under the Department of Justice's COVID Fraud Enforcement Task Force, formed by Attorney General Merrick Garland, in an attempt to coordinate government agencies' work to prosecute criminals perpetrating these schemes and recover, by some estimates, hundreds of billions of dollars lost to pandemic related fraud.

Of course, not every COVID-related scheme involves identity theft, but this type of crime has been a boon to crooks during the ongoing pandemic.

News URL

https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2022/07/19/covid_fraud_sentence/