A California woman was charged with using the names of convicted killers, including Scott Peterson, to collect more than $145,000 in fraudulent unemployment benefits — a small but headline-grabbing part of more than $20 billion stolen in similar scams during the coronavirus pandemic, prosecutors said Wednesday.
Iglesias was employed by a private company that contracted with San Quentin State Prison, where Peterson and Stayner are housed, and may have used her job to get access to prisoners’ personal information, prosecutors said.She was arrested Saturday in Contra Costa County by a team of agents from the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.
"Don’t let the infamous names distract you from who this crime really hurt — the most vulnerable in our society," Attorney General Rob Bonta said in announcing the charges. Such thefts also harm "families in need, parents left without jobs during a pandemic, and Californians struggling to get by," he said.She had a previous conviction for robbery in Contra Costa County in 2005, his office said.
California has one of the nation’s largest public benefit systems. More than 20 million people filed more than 60 million claims for unemployment, disability insurance and paid family leave over the past decade. At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic — when many people were unable to continue working because of business lockdowns, it was sending out more than 600,000 application documents daily.the state stopped $120 billion worth of fraud attempts in 2020 and 2021 but failed to stop $20 billion in fraud.DAILY NEWSLETTERthat I have read and agree
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