The biggest risks of working at a hot dog cart is probably sun exposure, possible a cut from a utensil, and maybe trichinosis. But for one hotdog stand employee, the greatest risk for him was having his identity stolen by Matthew David Kerians. A fellow hot dog cart employee. In the late 1980’s, Keirans assumed his hot dog cart victim’s identity and obtained a Kentucky birth certificate and several identification documents to do so. Keirans then went and gained employment as a high-level administrator in an Iowa City hospital. But he also went on to fraudulently obtain vehicle and personal loans with a total value of over $200,000 from the credit unions. All in his victim’s name.
Twenty years later, in 2019, the victim discovered his identity had been stolen and had hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt in his name. He went to the bank to put a stop to it, with no luck. If anything, it started a spiral of very bad luck. Because the bank took the word of the fraudster. To clarify account ownership, the bank called the phone number on the account and spoke with Kerians, who stated he lived in Wisconsin and did not give anyone in California permission to access his bank accounts. After faxing the Los Angeles Police Department a series of phony identification documents, the LAPD arrested Keirans’ victim on two felony charges. The victim was charged in Keirans’ name and held without bail.
In the ensuing months, a California state judge ultimately found Keirans’ victim not mentally competent to stand trial and ordered Keirans’ victim to a California mental hospital. As a result of Kerians’ false reports, Keirans’ victim spent 428 days in county jail and 147 days in the mental hospital. Keirans’ victim did not give up. In January 2023, he found a detective who obtained DNA evidence that conclusively proved that Keirans was a fraud.
On April 1, 2024, Keirans pled guilty to aggravated identity theft.
Shout out to the victim who never gave up.
Today’s Fraud of the Day is based on article ”Former Iowa hospital administrator pleads guilty to decades-long identity theft scheme” published by Sioux Land on April 1, 2024.
A former administrator at an Iowa hospital who assumed a different man’s identity for over three decades pleaded guilty to identity theft Monday. Matthew David Keirans, 58, from Hartland, Wisconsin was convicted of one count of false statements to a national credit union administration insured institution and one count of aggravated identity theft, according to a release from the Department of Justice (DOJ).
His actions resulted in his victim being falsely imprisoned for over a year.
