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Stokes, a 27-year-old identity thief, was serving time at Fort Dix on an unspecified conviction when he schemed with others to collect $140,000 in COVID unemployment benefits while they were federal prisoners.
That’s right.
Stokes was a prisoner at the low-security Federal Correctional Institution adjacent to the Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst in Burlington County when he and a group of co-conspirators “obtained personal identification information, including names, dates of birth, and Social Security numbers belonging to other individuals without those individuals’ knowledge and consent” in 2020, U.S. Attorney Philip R. Sellinger said.
They used that information to apply for – and receive -- $140,000 in federal benefits under the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act, he said.
Stokes, of Country Club Hills, Illinois, took a deal from the government rather than face trial, pleading guilty to conspiring to commit wire fraud during a videoconference hearing with a U.S. District Court judge in Newark, Sellinger said.
U.S. District Judge Madeline Cox Arleo scheduled sentencing for Aug. 23, 2022.
Sellinger credited special agents of the U.S. Department of Labor’s Office of Inspector General in New York; special agents of the FBI in Newark; and special agents with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Homeland Security Investigations in Newark, with the investigation leading the plea, secured by Assistant U.S. Attorney Andrew Kogan of his Cybercrime Unit in Newark.
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