Slashdot summary:

Matthew David Keirans, 58, was convicted of one count of false statement to a National Credit Union Administration insured institution – punishable by up to 30 years in federal prison – and one count of aggravated identity theft – punishable by up to two years in federal prison. Keirans worked as a systems architect in the hospital’s IT department from June 28, 2013 to July 20, 2023, when he was terminated for misconduct related to the identity theft investigation. Keirans worked at the hospital under the name William Donald Woods, an alias he had been using since about 1988, when he worked with the real William Woods at a hot dog cart in Albuquerque, N.M. […] By 2013, Keirans had moved to eastern Wisconsin. He started his IT job with UI Hospitals and worked remotely. He earned more than $700,000 in his 10 years working for the hospital. In 2023, his salary was $140,501, according to the hospital.

In 2019, the real William Woods was homeless, living in Los Angeles. He went to a branch of the national bank and explained that he recently discovered someone was using his credit and had accumulated a lot of debt. Woods didn’t want to pay the debt and asked to know the account numbers for any accounts he had open at the bank so he could close them. Woods gave the bank employee his real Social Security card and an authentic California Identification card, which matched the information the bank had on file. Because there was a large amount of money in the accounts, the bank employee asked Woods a series of security questions that he was unable to answer. The bank employee called Keirans, whose the phone number was connected to the accounts. He answered the security questions correctly and said no one in California should have access to the accounts. The employee called the Los Angeles Police Department, and officers spoke with Woods and Keirans. Keirans faxed the Los Angeles officers a copy of Woods’ Social Security card and birth certificate, as well as a Wisconsin driver’s license Keirans had acquired under Woods’ name. The driver’s license had the name William David Woods – David is Keirans’ real middle name – rather than William Donald Woods. When questioned, Keiran told an LAPD officer he sometimes used David as a middle name, but his real name was William Donald Woods. The real Woods was arrested and charged with identity theft and false impersonation, under a misspelling of Keirans’ name: Matthew Kierans.

Because Woods continued to insist, throughout the judicial process, that he was William Woods and not Matthew Kierans, a judge ruled in February 2020 that he was not mentally competent to stand trial and he was sent to a mental hospital in California, where he received psychotropic medication and other mental health treatment. In March 2021, Woods pleaded no contest to the identity theft charges – meaning he accepted the conviction but did not admit guilt. He was sentenced to two years imprisonment with credit for the two years he already served in the county jail and the hospital and was released. He was also ordered to pay $400 in fines and to stop using the name William Woods. He did not stop. Woods continued to attempt to regain his identity by filing customer disputes with financial organizations in an attempt to clear his credit report. He also reached out to multiple law enforcement agencies, including the Hartland Police Department in Wisconsin, where Keirans lived. Woods eventually discovered where Keirans was working, and in January 2023 he reached out to the University of Iowa Hospitals’ security department, who referred his complaint to the University of Iowa Police Department.

University of Iowa Police Detective Ian Mallory opened an investigation into the case. Mallory found the biological father listed on Woods’ birth certificate – which both Woods and Keirans had sent him an official copy of – and tested the father’s DNA against Woods’ DNA. The test proved Woods was the man’s son. On July 17, 2023, Mallory interviewed Keirans. He asked Keirans what his father’s name was, and Keirans accidentally gave the name of his own adoptive father. Mallory then confronted Keirans with the DNA evidence, and Keirans responded by saying, “my life is over” and “everything is gone.” He then confessed to the prolonged identity theft, according to court documents.

  • @tsonfeir@lemm.ee
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    508 months ago

    The original guy should be able to collect social security on the bad guy’s earnings.

  • @Monument@lemmy.sdf.org
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    448 months ago

    It’s kind of weird that you can get 30 years for lying to a credit union once, but only 2 for stealing someone’s identity for 30 years.

    If the victim is a federally insured financial institution you get a huge jail sentence.
    But if the victim is a person with no safety net, it’s a comparative slap on the wrist.
    Skewed priorities.

  • I hope the real Keirans has enough to be worth suing. No way he didn’t know some poor guy was sitting in jail for years because of him. What was it all about?

    • @solrize@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      It sounds like the real guy’s story was quite sad. He was apparently mentally ill when he was thrown in jail, and (not stated in the article) possibly freaked out instead of being able to deal with the LE and administrative bureaucracies about the name misuse. So they decided there was nothing to his story and locked him up. Obviously this was triggered by the ID theft, but it also seems like a system failure in that the discrepancy wasn’t solved and the fake guy caught, at that time. The real guy instead went through a court case and served 2 years after pleading no contest for the “ID theft” of using his actual real name.

      The fake guy on the other hand did the identity theft in his early 20s, bouncing some checks to steal a car under the other guy’s name (the other guy got in trouble over that, but it’s unclear how much). He got a fast food job under the fake name, and eventually worked his way up to a high paying hospital IT job where he worked and paid his taxes for 10 years til the ID theft fell apart. It’s not stated whether he got up to other bad stuff using the fake name.

      The fake guy now faces 2 years in prison for aggravated ID theft and 30 years for “false statement to a National Credit Union Administration insured institution”. That is a pretty surprising difference betwen the two. I wonder what his actual sentences will be. He is 58 now.

      It’s worth reading the article in this instance as covers a fair amount of detail. It’s hard to tell whether it’s a story of a mostly-reformed ex-scumbag trying to escape from his past, or if he continued to be up to other stuff as well.

      Added: I got confused, the real guy’s arrest was in 2019, not decades earlier. So the fake guy lied to the police with false documents relatively recently resulting in the real guy getting locked up, not so good.

      • @tyler@programming.dev
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        228 months ago

        I don’t think he was mentally ill! The judge thought he was because he wouldn’t stop claiming he was who he actually was. They literally put a dude in jail for claiming he was himself! Like what else is he supposed to do? Go steal someone else’s identity?

        • shastaxc
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          18 months ago

          He was homeless, so they obviously assumed he was mentally ill

    • @idiomaddict@feddit.de
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      138 months ago

      He’d already stolen a car under his first name from his parents. My guess is mostly that he had a clean record, with potential discomfort with his family name (the article points out he’s adopted, which feels… either gross or like there’s missing context, but stealing a car from your parents isn’t a symptom of a great relationship).

  • LiveLM
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    128 months ago

    a judge ruled in February 2020 that he was not mentally competent to stand trial and he was sent to a mental hospital in California, where he received psychotropic medication and other mental health treatment.

    Profoundly fucked up. God knows what this guy went through at the clinic for telling the truth

    • Admiral PatrickOP
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      128 months ago

      The whole story read like a thriller novel where the protagonist was being gaslighted from page one. Just absolutely horrifying to know someone went through that.

  • 🇰 🌀 🇱 🇦 🇳 🇦 🇰 ℹ️
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    8 months ago

    I read about a particular book that is responsible for so many cases of identity theft similar to this guy’s story. Even knowing all the tricks and stuff used in the book, it’s very hard to catch someone once they use it to disappear/become someone else.