ALBANY, N.Y. — A 23-year-old man was sentenced to one year in prison for unemployment insurance fraud, the U.S. Attorney's Office said.
According to its press release, Taliek Lanier, of Albany, engaged in a fraudulent scheme to receive over $110,000 in unemployment benefits under the names of three different people.
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This includes benefits funded by the federal government in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
As part of his guilty plea, the Attorney's Office say Lanier admitted to providing Jamie Johnson with personal identification of those three other people, which Johnson used to file false claims.
Lanier also admitted that those claims received $113,936 in unemployment insurance benefits paid out by the New York State Department of Labor.
Johnson pled guilty to fraudulently obtaining $701,441 in unemployment insurance benefits as part of the scheme, and agreed to pay $701,441 in restitution to New York State.
“Jamie Johnson used stolen identities to cheat a system designed to help unemployed New Yorkers as the pandemic raged in 2020 and 2021," US Attorney Carla B. Freedman said. "Johnson’s crimes ultimately did not pay – she is going to prison and she has forfeited hundreds of thousands of dollars in ill-gotten gains."
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