A South Korean man in Los Angeles has been sentenced to 24 years in prison for running a COVID-19 unemployment benefits scam using inmates’ personal information.
37-year-old Edward Kim will serve 292 months in prison for trafficking drugs, including fentanyl, and stealing personal information of 23 inmates at a California prison to run a COVID-19 EDD insurance fraud scheme, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Central District of California.
In addition to prison time, United States District Judge James V. Selna sentenced Kim to “pay $5.45 million in restitution to the California Employment Development Department (EDD) and $16,800 to the Internal Revenue Service.”
Kim pleaded guilty last November to one count of conspiracy to distribute methamphetamine and fentanyl, one count of distribution of methamphetamine, one count of conspiracy to defraud the government with respect to claims, two counts of mail fraud, and two counts of possession of 15 or more unauthorized access devices.
“Between May 2020 and March 2021, Kim filed a total of 459 fraudulent unemployment insurance claims using information from inmates in California,” said Public Information Officer Ciaran McEvoy. “The investigation revealed that Kim obtained inmates’ personal information through the dark web and elsewhere.”
Kim was arrested in November 2020 at a traffic stop in La Habra. At the time, the La Habra Police Department found 22 grams of methamphetamine and 16 debit cards in other people’s names in his car.
Authorities subsequently searched Kim’s luxury apartment in downtown Los Angeles and a warehouse in La Habra, seizing narcotics, dozens of EDD documents, a notebook marked “stimulus scheme,” containing approximately 405 different identities, and a handgun with no serial number.
Kim also rented a warehouse in La Habra to store equipment and materials for the manufacture and distribution of narcotics and also conducted a marijuana cultivation business.
The investigation was conducted jointly by the Department of Homeland Security, the Internal Revenue Service, the California Department of Labor, the California Department of Corrections, and the La Habra Police Department.
BY Jang Yeol [jang.yeol@koreadaily.com]
