A fifty-year-old from Wisconsin in the United States has reportedly admitted to stealing the identity of a former colleague for more than three decades, by multiplying loan applications in his name, to the point of bringing him to the brink in a psychiatric hospital.
“In total, Matthew David Keirans’ victim spent 428 days in the county jail and 147 days in a psychiatric hospital as a result of Keirans’ false reports to the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) and (the District Attorney). ),” noted the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Iowa, according to the New York Post SATURDAY.
Last Monday, the 58-year-old man pleaded guilty to aggravated identity theft and false declaration to a credit institution, for having tormented for more than 30 years a former colleague, William Donald Woods, with whom he had worked. at a New Mexico hot dog stand in the 1980s.
For decades, the accused allegedly appropriated the identity of his ex-colleague, culminating the scam with numerous loan requests in his name, totaling $200,000 US, using his date of birth. and his social insurance number, between August 2016 and May 2022, according to the American media.
Previously, the 50-year-old used the alias to get married in 1994, and has a child who uses the last name “Woods,” according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
Except that in 2019, when the victim allegedly tried to report the large debts to have the account opened in his name closed, he would have been unable to answer the security questions of the manager of a Los Angeles bank, who would have called the police despite having a valid social security card and identification documents.
At the same time, the accused allegedly confirmed to the Los Angeles police that he had not authorized anyone to access his accounts, by sending false documents to support his claims, according to the American media.
The victim was then allegedly incarcerated on two charges, before being deemed unfit to stand trial and forced into a psychiatric hospital, where she was allegedly forced to take psychotropic medications, the US attorney’s office said.
Then, upon his release, authorities allegedly asked him – wrongly – to use only his “real name, Matthew Keirans” in the future, he continued, according to the NY Post.
During the following years, the victim would have tried to regain his identity on numerous occasions, while the accused would have made numerous false reports to the police to keep him away, before a local department decided to carry out a DNA test with William’s father Donald Woods, revealing the whole affair.
After admitting to the misleading staging, Matthew David Keirans now faces between 2 and 32 years behind bars, in addition to a fine of 1.25 million US dollars, according to the NY Post.
