A 33-year-old Tracy woman was sentenced to nine years in federal prison for an unemployment fraud scheme during the pandemic, U.S. Attorney Phillip Talbert announced.  

Kaymeisha Keyes was convicted of wire fraud and aggravated identity theft in a scheme to defraud the unemployment insurance benefit program during the COVID-19 pandemic. She has also been ordered to pay $1,116,683 in restitution. 

According to court documents, between April 2020 and August 2021, Keyes executed a scheme to defraud the California Employment Development Department (EDD) by filing more than 70 fraudulent unemployment benefit claims, seeking Pandemic Unemployment Assistance and other benefits under the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act.  

Keyes took names, birth dates, and Social Security numbers from people and used their identities to file fraudulent unemployment insurance claims. In them, she said that the claimants had recently lost employment or were unable to find employment due to the COVID-19 pandemic.  

In reality, these unemployment insurance claims were fraudulent because the claimants were not unemployed, they were not eligible for California unemployment insurance benefits, or Keyes did not have authority to file claims on their behalf, prosecutors said. 

Keyes was able to bypass security measures and submit false information that allowed fake and stolen identities to be verified. This included images of fake driver’s licenses that contained photos of Keyes and co-schemers and the names of the purported claimants. She also submitted photos of herself and co-schemers that were used to verify the photos on the fake driver’s licenses. Once these false identities were verified, Keyes filed the fraudulent unemployment insurance claims with EDD under the same identities. 

Keyes then requested that the unemployment insurance benefits be mailed to various addresses under her control, including her residence in Tracy.  

The scheme sought over $2 million in unemployment insurance benefits and caused EDD and the United States to incur actual losses exceeding $1.1 million, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said. 

Katy St. Clair got her start in journalism by working in the classifieds department at the East Bay Express during the height of alt weeklies, then sweet talked her way into becoming staff writer, submissions editor, and music editor. She has been a columnist in the East Bay Express, SF Weekly, and the San Francisco Examiner. Starting in 2015, she begrudgingly scaled the inverted pyramid at dailies such as the Vallejo Times-Herald, The Vacaville Reporter, and the Daily Republic. She has her own independent news site and blog that covers the delightfully dysfunctional town of Vallejo, California, where she also collaborates with the investigative team at Open Vallejo. A passionate advocate for people with developmental disabilities, she serves on both the Board of the Arc of Solano and the Arc of California. She lives in Vallejo.