On May 12th, a Cuyahoga County Comon Pleas Court Judge sentenced Francesca Figueroa-Rivera and Claudine Stavole to two years and three years of incarceration respectively for various criminal offenses related to fraudulent claims involving the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance Program (PUA). The two defendants previously plead guilty to various offenses including Engaging in a Pattern of Corrupt Activity, Tampering with Government Records, Bribery, and a Theft-related charge. In addition, the two defendants were ordered to pay a total of $789,282 in restitution.
Inspector General Randall J. Meyer praised the efforts of the Cuyahoga County Prosecutor’s Office, stating, “I want to acknowledge the Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Michael O’Malley and his staff for their collaboration in pursuing this complex white-collar crime case. The successful prosecution of these individuals demonstrates that the State of Ohio does not tolerate fraud and corruption of taxpayer-funded programs.”
In 2020, because of the COVID-19 pandemic and the increased unemployment of millions of Americans, Congress passed various programs to address the crisis, including the PUA program. The PUA program expanded and loosened eligibility unemployment requirements for recipients. Consequently, ODJFS, the agency responsible for distributing PUA benefits in Ohio, received an unprecedented number of unemployment compensation claims. This increase in claims necessitated ODJFS to hire intermittent and temporary contracted workers to process the claims. In fiscal year 2021, ODJFS disbursed approximately $7.6 billion in pandemic unemployment benefits and later, ODJFS identified millions of dollars of the disbursals as fraudulent…