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Leicester Woman Pleads Guilty to Role in COVID-19 Pandemic Fraud Scheme

Summary

A press release of the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Massachusetts, dated May 19, 2022, announcing that Destinee Snay, 20, of Leicester pleaded guilty on May 16, 2022, in federal court in Worcester to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud in a pandemic unemployment fraud scheme. The release states that from about June 2020 to about October 2020 Snay and co-defendant William Cordor conspired to file false unemployment assistance claims in multiple states using stolen identities, and that Snay personally filed approximately 20 false claims using phony email accounts. According to the release, the funds went to prepaid debit card accounts and paid for hotels, rental cars and a trip to Miami. Cordor previously pleaded guilty and is scheduled to be sentenced on June 16, 2022.

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“Leicester Woman Pleads Guilty to Role in COVID-19 Pandemic Fraud Scheme.” Archived at Pandemic Darlings, https://pandemicdarlings.com/source-documents/2022-05-20-leicester-woman-pleads-guilty-to-role-in-covid-19-pandemic-de13d4efa4/, SHA-256 8816d0563194b2126ac069f2f82a37c56f14ddafb0c742b35ccbb9c3420a7aa5.

Full text

                       United States Attorney Rachael S. Rollins
                               District of Massachusetts

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE                           CONTACT: CHRISTINA DiIORIO-STERLING
May 19, 2022                                                       Phone (617) 748-3356
www.justice.gov/usao/ma/news.html                                usama.media@usdoj.gov

                                     twitter.com/dmanews1

                  LEICESTER WOMAN PLEADS GUILTY TO ROLE IN
                       COVID-19 PANDEMIC FRAUD SCHEME

      BOSTON – A Leicester woman has pleaded guilty to her involvement in a pandemic
unemployment fraud scheme.

       Destinee Snay, 20, pleaded guilty on May 16, 2022 in federal court in Worcester to one
count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud. U.S. District Court Judge Timothy S. Hillman
scheduled sentencing for Oct. 12, 2022. Snay was indicted in July 2021 along with co-defendant
William Cordor.

        From about June 2020 to about October 2020, Snay and Cordor conspired to file false
and fraudulent claims for unemployment assistance in multiple states using stolen identities
obtained from a variety of places including Facebook and from former fellow inmates at
Worcester County House of Correction. To facilitate the scheme, Snay created phony email
accounts on Gmail, AOL and Yahoo which she used to file the fraudulent claims. In total, Snay
personally filed approximately 20 false and fraudulent unemployment claims for Massachusetts
and other states. Snay and Cordor then transferred the funds into prepaid debit card accounts they
obtained and used the proceeds to pay for hotels, rental cars, a trip to Miami and a shopping
spree at Saks Fifth Avenue.

        On Nov. 16, 2021, Cordor, pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit wire
fraud, four counts of wire fraud and four counts of aggravated identity theft. He is scheduled to
be sentenced on June 16, 2022.

        The charge of conspiracy to commit wire fraud provides for a sentence of up to 20 years
in prison, up to three years of supervised release and a fine of $250,000. Sentences are imposed
by a federal district court judge based upon the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines and statutes which
govern the determination of a sentence in a criminal case.

      United States Attorney Rachael S. Rollins; Jonathan Mellone, Special Agent in Charge of
Department of Labor, Office of Inspector General, Office of Investigations; and Mark
Comorosky, Special Agent in Charge of U.S. Secret Service, Boston Field Office, made the
announcement. Valuable assistance in the case was provided by the Leicester and Marlboro
Police Departments. Assistant U.S. Attorneys Danial E. Bennet and John T. Mulcahy of Rollins’
Criminal Division are prosecuting the case.

        On May 17, 2021, the Attorney General established the COVID-19 Fraud Enforcement
Task Force to marshal the resources of the Department of Justice in partnership with agencies
across government to enhance efforts to combat and prevent pandemic-related fraud. The Task
Force bolsters efforts to investigate and prosecute the most culpable domestic and international
criminal actors and assists agencies tasked with administering relief programs to prevent fraud
by, among other methods, augmenting and incorporating existing coordination mechanisms,
identifying resources and techniques to uncover fraudulent actors and their schemes, and sharing
and harnessing information and insights gained from prior enforcement efforts. For more
information on the Department’s response to the pandemic, please visit
https://www.justice.gov/coronavirus.

        Anyone with information about allegations of attempted fraud involving COVID-19 can
report it by calling the Department of Justice’s National Center for Disaster Fraud (NCDF)
Hotline at 866-720-5721 or via the NCDF Web Complaint Form at:
https://www.justice.gov/disaster-fraud/ncdf-disaster-complaint-form.

                                              ###

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