COLUMBUS, Ohio — A former state unemployment office worker and a Columbus-area daycare owner, working both together and separately, arranged for nearly $6 million to be paid to hundreds of fraudulent jobless claims, the state inspector general announced Thursday.
Alana Hamilton, an intermittent customer service representative, and daycare owner Lasheta McClellan, were indicted Wednesday on 19 counts by a Franklin County grand jury, including engaging in a pattern of corrupt activity, theft, telecommunications fraud, records tampering, money laundering, and tax fraud, according to an IG report. The indictment also seeks for the two women to forfeit more than $3 million.
Hamilton, a Columbus resident, told state investigators that she worked with McClellan to alter 40 fraudulent unemployment claims totaling $1.17 million.
According to the report, McClellan was sent tens of thousands of dollars via her own bogus claim and charged others to assist them in getting their own fraudulent claims processed. Investigators found McClellan had 12 bank accounts that were sent more than $500,000 in unemployment funds via 34 different claims, and that McClellan sent Hamilton a total of $57,250 via her two Columbus daycares, Start 2 Finish Learning Academy.
Hamilton and McClellan also each engaged in a massive amount of unemployment fraud independently of each other, according to the IG’s report.
State investigators found that while Hamilton worked as a customer service representative for the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services between December 2020 and October 2021, she improperly altered claims from 104 other people, the report stated, resulting in them getting a total of nearly $2.4 million. McClellan, meanwhile, helped 86 others get more than $2.3 million in total via fraudulent claims without Hamilton’s help, according to the report.
In all, the two were involved in the total payout of $5.9 million to 230 fraudulent claims, according to the report.
The Ohio Department of Job and Family Services alerted the IG’s office and other agencies in February 2022 after noticing that the claims Hamilton altered didn’t include documents required to prove the applicants’ eligibility, such as ID and proof of employment. When investigators subpoenaed Hamilton’s bank records, they noticed the payments from McClellan’s daycares and obtained her bank records as well, the report stated.
Unemployment fraud became a major problem during the COVID-19 pandemic, as state officials were flooded with claims and the federal government loosened verification requirements in order to pay out billions of dollars as quickly as possible. Between March 2020 and March 2022, the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services paid scammers $527 million in benefits.
While most of those scammers are believed to live abroad in countries like Nigeria, the IG’s office previously uncovered a similar scheme involving another former Ohio unemployment customer service representative who removed fraud flags from more than 40 people’s unemployment claims, allowing them to collect nearly $800,000.
Court records did not show attorneys on file for either Hamilton or McClellan.
