South Georgia woman headed to prison for pandemic fraud

ATLANTA — A South Georgia woman has been sentenced to 12 years in prison for her role in a scheme to defraud the state Department of Labor out of more than $30 million in unemployment benefits.

According to court documents, Tyshion Nautese Hicks, 32, of Vienna and seven co-conspirators filed more than 5,000 fraudulent unemployment insurance claims from March 2020 through November 2022, a period marked by the COVID-19 pandemic.

To perpetrate the scheme, the defendants created fictitious employers and fabricated lists of employees using information from thousands of identify theft victims, then filed fraudulent unemployment insurance claims on behalf of those nonexistent people on the Labor Department’s website.

They then caused the benefits to be disbursed via prepaid debit cards mailed to addresses of their choice, many of which were in Vienna and Cordele.

Hicks pleaded guilty last February to one count of conspiracy to commit mail fraud and one count of aggravated identity theft. Her co-conspirators already have pleaded guilty or been sentenced.

The scheme was one of the largest episodes of COVID fraud ever prosecuted, said Nicole Argentieri, head of the U.S. Justice Department’s Criminal Division.

“The defendant and her co-conspirators exploited a program designed to alleviate pandemic-related economic hardship to enrich themselves at the expense of federal taxpayers,” Argentieri said Friday. “Yesterday’s sentence underscores the department’s commitment to investigating and prosecuting those who steal from the public.”

In addition to the prison sentence, Hicks was ordered to serve three years of supervised release following the prison term and pay restitution in an amount yet to be determined.

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