YORK, Pa. — A York woman admitted in U.S. District Court this week that she was part of a conspiracy to submit fraudulent applications for Pandemic Unemployment Assistance in Colorado and Ohio, using other people's names and personal information without their consent, U.S. Attorney John C. Gurganus said Wednesday.
Tami Mateljan, 46, pleaded guilty to conspiring to commit wire fraud before U.S. District Court Judge Sylvia H. Rambo, Gurganus said.
Mateljan admitted that between October and December of 2020, she was part of conspiracy to obtain fraudulent PUA funding. The states involved transferred the ill-gotten funds to accounts she owned, Gurganus said.
She then used some of the money for her own benefit, and transferred the remaining money to conspirators in other countries, including Nigeria, according to Gurganus.
The case was investigated by Homeland Security Investigations.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Carlo D. Marchioli is prosecuting the case.
On May 17, 2021, the Attorney General established the COVID-19 Fraud Enforcement Task Force to marshal the resources of the Department of Justice in partnership with agencies across government to enhance efforts to combat and prevent pandemic-related fraud.
The Task Force bolsters efforts to investigate and prosecute the most culpable domestic and international criminal actors and assists agencies tasked with administering relief programs to prevent fraud by, among other methods, augmenting and incorporating existing coordination mechanisms, identifying resources and techniques to uncover fraudulent actors and their schemes, and sharing and harnessing information and insights gained from prior enforcement efforts.
For more information on the Department’s response to the pandemic, please visit https://www.justice.gov/coronavirus. Anyone with information about allegations of attempted fraud involving COVID-19 can report it by calling the Department of Justice’s National Center for Disaster Fraud (NCDF) Hotline at 866-720-5721 or via the NCDF Web Complaint Form at: https://www.justice.gov/disaster-fraud/ncdf-disaster-complaint-form.
