Woman sentenced in multi-million-dollar COVID unemployment scheme
(WKBN) – A woman who was convicted in a COVID-era unemployment scheme through her employment with the state was sentenced this week.
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Alana Hamilton was sentenced to four years and 11 months in prison and will have to pay back $1.1 million. Her accomplice, Lasheta McClellan, was sentenced in September to the same time frame and ordered to pay back $1.5 million.
Hamilton pleaded guilty in September to engaging in a pattern of corrupt activity, theft, and filing incomplete, false and fraudulent returns.
According to investigators, Hamilton was hired during the COVID-19 pandemic to process Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA) claims for the state after the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services (ODJFS) was inundated with claims after the qualification guidelines were relaxed during the pandemic.
Ultimately, the state disbursed about $7.6 billion in PUA benefits. Later, ODJFS identified millions of dollars of fraudulent disbursements and created an investigative task force to uncover them. It was during that investigation that a scheme was uncovered, operated by Hamilton and McClellan, that processed PUA claims without the proper documents or vetting, and that the women charged a fee to claimants for processing the fraudulent claims, according to investigators.
The following chart, provided by the Ohio Inspector General's Office, contains a breakdown of the number of claims and total fraudulent benefit payment amounts in which Hamilton and McClellan were involved:
Hamilton/McClellan – 40 claims totalling $1,171,561
Hamilton – 104 claims totaling $2,395,594
McClellan – 86 claims totaling $2,339,512
While the Inspector General did not clarify why the restitution amounts were less than the amounts shown in the breakdown, typical reasoning rests on any insurance payments, prior restitution, plea agreements any other legal avenues to establish restitution.
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