DETROIT (WWJ) – Multiple people from Metro Detroit are looking at charges connected to pandemic fraud, including a man serving prison time in Pennsylvania.
United States Attorney Dawn Ison announced Tuesday Andre Taylor, Jr., of Farmington Hills has been sentenced to six years and three months in federal prison on charges of wire fraud and aggravated identity theft arising out of a pandemic fraud and credit card scheme.
Taylor pleaded guilty to the scheme in December 2021. Officials say Taylor was running a scheme to defraud unemployment insurance agencies in multiple states, including Michigan.
Court documents show Taylor’s illegal activity started in October 2019, when he began obtaining credit cards intended for other people and using them without their permission.
Officials say he had multiple methods of getting the cards, including paying bribes to mail carriers in exchange for credit cards and other access devices stolen from mail routes. After getting the stolen credit cards, officials say he often used them to buy prepaid gift cards in bulk, which could then be used like cash and transferred with ease.
Beginning in March of 2020, according to Ison’s office, Taylor’s scheme expanded to include obtaining pandemic-related unemployment benefits.
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Once enhanced unemployment benefits (PUA) became available, authorities say he was able to get people’s personal identifying information and filed fraudulent claims in several states, including Michigan and Pennsylvania.
In some cases, Taylor would direct that the PUA benefits be electronically loaded onto bank cards or into accounts that he controlled. In other instances, Taylor would have the state workforce agencies arrange to mail pre-loaded debit cards containing the PUA benefits to addresses to which he had access.
Officials say he often had those cards sent to addresses along the routes of the mail carriers he was bribing, so they could intercept the mailed cards and get them to him.
In addition to his prison sentence, Taylor was ordered to pay $774,607 in restitution to his victims.
Ison said Taylor “took money from wherever it was available, and he did not care whom he harmed along the way.”
“Mr. Taylor’s conviction and sentence is a reflection of my office’s commitment to aggressive prosecution of those who steal identities to defraud both public and private victims,” she said.
In a separate case, Cortney Daquan Shields pleaded guilty Tuesday morning to conspiracy to commit wire fraud in connection with a scheme to defraud workforce agencies in multiple states and the Small Business Administration.
Shields, a current Bureau of Prisons inmate and former Michigan resident, stole more than $2.2 million, according to Ison’s office.
Court records show beginning at least as early as May of 2020 and continuing through at least July of 2021, Shields and several others were running a wire fraud scheme while he was behind bars.
Shields and his co-conspirators – including Daeshawn Tamar Posey, 25, of Detroit; Chaz Duane Shields, 33, of Detroit; and Brittany Levett Witherspoon, 25, of Warren, and potentially others unknown to the government – submitted more than 240 fraudulent unemployment insurance claims in more than 20 states.
Posey, Chaz Duane Shields and Witherspoon are charged in a related complaint. A complaint is only a charge and is not evidence of guilt. Trial cannot be held on felony charges in a complaint. When the investigation is completed, a determination will be made whether to seek a felony indictment, Ison’s office said.
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Cortney Shields also successfully obtained a fraudulent $20,833.00 Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loan.
Officials say Shields participated in the scheme from within the confines of the Federal Correctional Complex in Allenwood, Pennsylvania, where he was serving sentence on an unrelated fraud case. Members of the conspiracy transferred portions of the fraud proceeds to Shields via wire into his Bureau of Prisons commissary account.
As part of his plea, Shields agreed to the forfeiture of $26,794.11 seized from that account.
