According to the United States Attorney’s Office, District of New Jersey, 29-year-old Khaori Monroe of Newark, NJ, a former United States Postal Service employee, officially plead guilty last month for fraudulently obtaining unemployment benefits.
Case documents and court statements indicated that, “On March 27, 2020, the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act (CARES Act) was signed into law. The CARES Act created a new temporary federal unemployment insurance program called Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA), which provided unemployment insurance benefits for individuals who were not eligible for other types of unemployment (the self-employed, independent contractors, gig economy workers). The CARES Act also created a new temporary federal program called Federal Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (FPUC) that provided an additional $600 weekly benefit to those eligible for PUA and regular unemployment insurance benefits.”
After these acts and programs were put in place and during his employment as a mail carrier with USPS, Monroe, among other individuals, stole credit/debit cards containing other individual’s unemployment insurance benefits from a New Jersey location, activated the cards, and ultimately stole over $40,000.
Monroe plead guilty to one count of wire fraud, which is punishable by a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine, “twice the gross profits to Monroe or twice the gross loss suffered by the victims, whichever is greatest.”
He is expected to be sentenced on September 14, 2022.