Tacoma – A former employee of Washington State’s Employment Security Department pleaded guilty today in U.S. District Court in Tacoma to three federal felonies for his scheme to exploit his employment for personal enrichment and to fraudulently distribute at least $360,000 in pandemic-related unemployment benefits, announced Acting U.S. Attorney Nick Brown. Reyes De La Cruz, III, 48, of Moses Lake, Washington, personally enriched himself by at least $130,000 with his scheme. De La Cruz was arrested September 24, 2021, in Moses Lake and has been in federal custody since his arrest.
“We remain committed to working with our law enforcement partners to prosecute those who used the cover of the pandemic to unlawfully enrich themselves,” said U.S. Attorney Brown. “In this case, De La Cruz’s betrayal of public trust during a time of national crisis is particularly egregious.”
According to records filed in the case, De La Cruz was hired as an intake agent in April 2020 to help the Employment Security Department (ESD) deal with the crush of filings for pandemic unemployment benefits. De La Cruz had previously worked for ESD, from 1996 to 2003.
Between July 3, 2020, and March 15, 2021, De La Cruz used his access to the ESD claims database to defraud the benefits system in multiple ways. In at least ten instances, De La Cruz accepted bribes in exchange for engineering benefit payments for his friends, family, or acquaintances by making false entries in the claims database. In many...
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