California sent jobless benefits to death row inmates
SACRAMENTO — San Quentin inmate Scott Peterson, convicted of killing his wife and unborn son, received California unemployment benefits in recent months, according to a group of state and federal prosecutors who have been investigating fraud in the pandemic relief system administered by the state Employment Development Department.
So did convicted serial killer
Cary Stayner, who murdered two women and two girls near Yosemite in 1999 and now is jailed, near Peterson, on death row.
Also allegedly approved for an unemployment debit card: Isauro Aguirre, sentenced to death in 2018 for the torture and death of 8-year-old Gabriel Fernandez.
Nine district attorneys across California and a federal prosecutor on Tuesday made these allegations and called for Gov. Gavin Newsom to intervene to stop such unemployment swindling in California jails and prisons.
The DAs called the situation “the most significant fraud on taxpayer funds in California history,” according to a letter obtained by the Los Angeles Times, describing fraud that involves identity theft of prisoners as well as alleged scams by individual inmates and organized gangs to game the state system.
“It is a manifest problem that cannot be ignored, and the governor needs to take steps to address it,” said McGregor Scott, U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of California.
Though few dispute the need for unemployment aid during an unprecedented economic downturn — and the potential need for further stimulus money — the latest allegations highlight ongoing problems with EDD that have left many questioning the agency’s ability to administer the massive number of new claims.
So far, investigations have uncovered more than $400,000 in state benefits paid to death row inmates, and more than $140 million to other incarcerated people in California’s 38 prisons, according to Sacramento County Dist. Atty. Anne Marie Schubert, who helped organize and lead a task force that uncovered the alleged dupery. In total, payments to those ineligible due to incarceration in prisons and jails could total nearly $1 billion, the prosecutors claim.
“The murderers and rapists and human traffickers should not be getting this money,” said Schubert. “It needs to stop.”
Kern County District Attorney Cynthia Zimmer, whose district has five prisons, the most of any
county in California, called the scope of the scams shocking. Zimmer said her office had found about $16 million in allegedly fraudulent claims in her county alone.
“I’ve been a prosecutor for 36 years,” she said. “I have never seen fraud of this magnitude.”
Newsom on Tuesday announced a task force to tackle the problem.
“Unemployment fraud across local jails and state and federal prisons is absolutely unacceptable,” the governor said in a statement. “Earlier this year, I launched a strike team to expedite unemployment payments and to minimize abuse of the system. When we saw evidence of fraud in correctional facilities, I directed the Employment Development Department to review its practices and to take immediate actions to prevent fraud and to hold people accountable when fraud is not prevented.”
EDD officials said confidentiality rules prevented them from confirming that benefits had been paid to Peterson, Stayner and Aguirre.
Schubert and Zimmer said the alleged fraud was taking multiple forms. Some claims may have been submitted by inmates directly or by family and friends to whom they gave their personal information. Other inmates may be unwitting victims.
Instances of large-scale organized schemes have also been found, prosecutors said, including possible involvement of prison gangs. Charges have been filed in a handful of cases, but prosecutors say hundreds of investigations are ongoing.
Because the cases are complex and may involve thousands of incarcerated individuals in multiple jurisdictions — some making claims are imprisoned in different counties than where their payments are sent — prosecutors said individual counties couldn’t handle the burden of investigations, especially rural counties, including Lassen and Amador, where prisons are large and the district attorneys’ offices are small.
Federal prosecutors have helped piece together the scope of the problem, and district attorneys now are asking for Newsom to intervene because state unemployment authorities have failed to respond sufficiently.
“EDD, it’s just a dysfunctional mess,” said El Dorado County Dist. Atty. Vern Pierson, who is also involved in the task force and is president of the California District Attorneys Association. Pierson said he and other DAs had been told that EDD had only 17 fraud investigators statewide.
“At the line level,” he said, “they are trying to do their best, but they don’t have adequate resources or support.”
The potential fraud came to light after district attorneys in Los Angeles, Lassen County and San Mateo County uncovered questionable claims coming from local jails and prisons, in part from monitoring recorded phone conversations of inmates while investigating unrelated crimes, said multiple sources familiar with the investigations.
Riverside District Attorney Mike Hestrin said the scheme works typically by someone on the outside doing the paperwork. The payments typically go to an address outside of prison. Once the cash card is obtained, the person on the outside puts some of the funds into the inmate’s prison account, where it can be used to buy goods and services such as food items and stamps.