In hindsight, it seems stunning that Massachusetts would have taken a chance on hiring Tiffany Pacheco in the first place.
Two months before her April 2020 hiring she’d walked out of a federal prison after serving time for aggravated identity theft and passing bad checks.
Undeterred by that history, Massachusetts hired her for its Department of Unemployment Assistance — where she was put to work processing pandemic unemployment claims, with access to residents’ information.
Pacheco would go on to steal some of those identities and file bogus pandemic unemployment claims in their names, as well as file false claims under her own name and that of her husband, Arthur. All told, she took the government for nearly $200,000 in actual losses, according to court documents associated with her guilty plea.
Pacheco is not alone.
The pandemic spawned a tsunami of scams — likely the largest fraud in world history — and amid all of that, the government employees stand out as particularly egregious cases.
Post office workers stole stimulus checks and unemployment benefit cards straight out of the mail, city workers billed for pandemic-related services they never actually delivered, and Social Security and unemployment agency employees used their access to Americans’ identities to write — and in some cases also approve — bogus benefit applications.
“It’s a travesty that government employees took advantage of the gaps and weak spots to game the system for personal gain,” said Adam...
Albany, NY (WRGB) — A Poughkeepsie man who previously went to federal prison for an insurance fraud scheme is now facing new federal charges after investigators say he ran a similar operation agai...