A previously deported illegal immigrant was arrested in New York together with an unknown coconspirator for allegedly committing $1.9 million in widespread unemployment fraud.
In 2014, Yohauris Rodriguez Hernandez, a Dominican Republic citizen, was found guilty of running a tax fraud scam. When she was released from prison in 2017, she was deported. Hernandez and Gerardo Enmanuel Luna Marmolejos stole almost 40,000 identities to submit false tax returns and obtain reimbursements from the Internal Revenue Service.
Hernandez reentered the United States illegally following her previous expulsion and went on to dedicate more alleged offenses, this time involving pandemic unemployment fraud, in which Hernandez and her coconspirator filed false jobless claims using hacked data and collected fees.
Hernandez perpetrated the fraud in three states, according to a representative for the Department of Justice. According to a news statement from the Department of Justice, her scams were discovered after she left behind New York Department of Labor unemployment debit cards issued to a large number of people in a hotel room in Yonkers, New York.
The scheme was first discovered after YOHAURIS RODIRGUEZ HERNANDEZ and CC-1 fled a Yonkers hotel in December 2020, leaving behind over 500 pieces of NYS DOL mail containing information and NYS DOL-issued debit cards for approximately 76 people in their previously occupied room, according to the release.
Hernandez did not commit the systemic unemployment fraud at the immigration detention complex, according to an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) spokeswoman. According to the spokesperson, she presumably managed to reenter the country illegally after being deported in 2017 before conducting the pandemic-related fraud.
Hernandez is one of a number of people charged by federal authorities with fraud involving COVID-19 unemployment compensation or forgiven loans under the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP).
