A Los Angeles man pleaded guilty Wednesday to his role in a scheme to steal the personal information of prison inmates and identity theft victims in order to illegally obtain more than $235,000 in taxpayer-funded jobless benefits while incarcerated himself.
Dajuan Hassan, 36, entered a plea in downtown Los Angeles to one federal count of mail fraud.
Sentencing was set for Nov. 4.
According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office, from July 2020 to January 2021, Hassan and co-defendant Prentiss Westbrook, 36, of South Los Angeles conspired to fraudulently obtain unemployment insurance benefits, including Pandemic Unemployment Assistance funds.
PUA was a federal program established by Congress in 2020 because of the COVID-19 pandemic and was administered by the Employment Development Department.
Hassan, who was incarcerated in a California state prison at the time, obtained the personal identity information of inmates and passed it to Westbrook on the outside, using the prison phone system, prosecutors said. Westbrook and others then filed fraudulent claims with EDD on behalf of the inmates and in the names of identity theft victims, papers filed in Los Angeles federal court show.
In the bogus EDD applications, Westbrook falsely represented that the claimants had recently lost employment from California businesses or were unable to find employment in California because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
To receive the funds, Westbrook arranged for EDD-issued debit cards to be mailed to addresses under his control, including one in Gardena. Westbrook and others later withdrew cash from ATMs throughout the region, prosecutors said.
Westbrook admitted in his plea agreement that the scheme caused a total loss of over $235,000 and involved more than 10 victims.
He was sentenced in June to three years in federal prison, followed by two years probation. U.S. District Judge Michael Fitzgerald also ordered him to pay $235,398 in restitution.
It was unclear why Hassan was incarcerated at the time of the scheme.