PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — A Montgomery County man who spent 30 years behind bars for a 1985 murder now faces additional prison time after he pleaded guilty to stealing nearly $95,000 worth of COVID-19 relief funds.
Vernon Steed, 56, of Upper Gwynedd, pleaded guilty on Tuesday to nine felonies, including dealing in unlawful proceeds and theft by deception, for forging forms to collect about $94,875 in COVID rental assistance.
In 2021, Steed and his wife used his position as a mentor to people dealing with addiction to get their IDs, according to prosecutor Gwen Kull, then listed his dead sister-in-law as the landlord of properties he didn’t own.
“He used his position as an advocate and counselor at Hopeworx to reach out to people who were either suffering from active addiction or who were in recovery to obtain their identities and use their identities to submit these fraudulent COVID relief applications,” she said.
“They then gave some funds — very little amounts in gift cards and some little cash — to these people who had given them their ID cards, but then they used the majority of that cash to pay back credit card debt.”
Kull said it’s too early to say what sentence prosecutors will seek for Steed, but guidelines call for state prison time. His wife previously pleaded guilty and was sentenced to house arrest.
Steed could face additional time for violating parole, which he was granted in 2018 after the Supreme Court ruled life sentences for juveniles were unconstitutional. Steed was sentenced to life in 1988 for a shooting three years earlier, when he was 17 years old. He spent 30 years in prison.
Steed was appointed to a volunteer position on the Montgomery County Board of Prisons in 2022 but stepped down three days before the fraud charges were filed.