A Georgia woman was sentenced Thursday for orchestrating a scheme that defrauded the Georgia Department of Labor (GaDOL) out of tens of millions of dollars in unemployment benefits meant to aid those impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, according to the Department of Justice (DOJ).
Tyshion Nautese Hicks, 32, of Vienna, received a 12-year federal prison sentence, followed by three years of supervised release, with restitution to be determined at a later date, the department stated.
“In one of the largest COVID fraud schemes ever prosecuted, the defendant and her coconspirators filed more than 5,000 fraudulent COVID unemployment insurance claims using stolen identities and unlawfully obtained more than $30 million in benefits,” said Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Nicole M. Argentieri, head of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division, in a statement.
According to court documents, from March 2020 to November 2022, Hicks and her co-conspirators filed more than 5,000 false unemployment claims with the GaDOL, resulting in the theft of at least $30 million in benefits.