PHOENIX — Three Valley residents have been ordered to pay restitution to the Arizona Department of Economic Security after they used the identities of prison inmates to fraudulently apply for pandemic relief.
The U.S. Attorney's Office of Arizona announced Thursday that three defendants had been convicted for their participation in a scheme meant to obtain unemployment benefits during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Likishe Jhanell Kelly, 43, of Phoenix was sentenced last week to three years in prison after pleading guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud and was ordered to pay $375,094 in restitution.
Christine Boston, 52, of Mesa was sentenced to three years in prison and ordered to pay $97,596.
Boston was incarcerated at a prison in Goodyear when she began submitting information about other inmates to Kelly and 36-year-old Antoinette Coleman.
Kelly would then file applications for unemployment benefits in the name of Boston and other inmates. Kelly would then compensate Boston by depositing money into the inmate's commissary account, prosecutors said.
Throughout 2020, Kelly and the other defendants submitted up to 42 fraudulent applications.
Coleman was sentenced last week to five years of probation and ordered to pay $19,678 in restitution. The total amount of restitution to DES is about $492,000.
The three defendants were not the only people to carry out this type of scheme in Arizona.
Last year, three people were sentenced for using the inmates of the Pima County jail to apply for unemployment benefits during the pandemic.
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