A former Arizona man pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in Portland Tuesday to six counts of wire fraud and six counts of aggravated identity theft after allegedly filing false claims for unemployment insurance benefits using identities of Maine residents, the U.S. Department of Justice announced on Tuesday.
According to the Justice Department, James McAuliffe, 55, filed fraudulent applications for unemployment payments with the Maine Department of Labor from January to November 2020 using other people’s personal identifying information without their knowledge or consent.
As part of the scheme, the DOJ claims McAuliffe filed fraudulent applications for replacement driver’s licenses with the Maine Bureau of Motor Vehicles, changed the drivers’ mailing addresses, then used the licenses as proof of identification for his fraudulent unemployment claims.
McAuliffe had the unemployment benefits loaded onto debit cards and wired into an account he opened in another person’s name, according to the Justice Department. He then withdrew the money from ATMs in Arizona. At the time of his arrest, McAuliffe was living in Kansas.
He faces up to 20 years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000, followed by supervised release on each count of wire fraud. The aggravated identity theft charges carry a mandatory minimum sentence of two years in prison, which must be served after the sentence for the wire fraud counts.
The U.S. Department of Labor, Office of Inspector General and the U.S. Postal Inspection Service investigated the case.
U.S. Attorney Darcie N. McElwee. “The important work of identifying and prosecuting anyone who stole taxpayer funds set aside for pandemic aid remains a priority for my office and Maine’s federal law enforcement agencies.”
The charges against McAuliffe were part of a coordinated, national effort to prosecute COVID-19 fraud that included 718 enforcement actions and federal criminal charges against 371 defendants for offenses related to more than $836 million in alleged COVID-19 fraud.
The Justice Department reported that it has now seized more than $1.4 billion in stolen COVID-19 relief funds and charged more than 3,000 people with crimes in federal districts across the country. Many of these cases were related to pandemic unemployment insurance benefit fraud and fraud against the Paycheck Protection Program and Economic Injury Disaster Loans. Other charges involved pandemic healthcare billing fraud, fraud against the Emergency Rental Assistance program and fraud against the IRS Employee Retention Credit program, a tax credit for businesses and tax-exempt organizations with employees who were affected during the COVID-19 pandemic.
