Convicted Sacramento after-school teacher charged with unemployment fraud, Yolo DA says
An incarcerated Sacramento man convicted of trying to lure a 12-year-old girl to have sex with him is now accused of working with an accomplice to receive more than $11,000 in fraudulent unemployment claims, Yolo County prosecutors said.
This week, Taylor Lewis Gholar and his girlfriend, Sonia Chan, were charged with felony counts of grand theft, making a false and fraudulent insurance claim and conspiracy to commit fraud, according to a news release from the Yolo County District Attorney’s Office.
The charges against Gholar and Chan were the result of a vast probe into a California unemployment scam that revealed at least $140 million worth of improper payments made to inmates and their outside accomplices, a group of county district attorneys announced late last month.
The district attorneys estimated the state had disbursed as much as $1 billion. The bank that handed out the COVID-19 money says the amount of fraudulent aid handed out in California could be twice as much.
The fraud, all tied to Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program, included inmates housed at every prison operated by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, according to the team of DAs. They said the fraud also was committed at county jails.
The assistance program was federally funded by the CARES Act in March as a unique way to provide unemployment benefits during the COVID-19 pandemic to people who historically could not qualify for such payments, such as business owners and independent contractors. The funds were then distributed through the states. In California, the Employment Development Department manages unemployment funds.
Local prosecutors said Gholar was fraudulently receiving unemployment insurance benefit payments while in custody at Yolo County Jail. Investigators learned of the alleged fraudulent payments after his conviction in late October.
The investigators intercepted phone calls between Gholar at the jail and Chan in which they discussed the filed fraudulent unemployment claims, according to the District Attorney’s Office. Gholar was not eligible for unemployment benefits because he was incarcerated.
Prosecutors allege that Chan submitted an online application on Gholar’s behalf and received payments in debit cards for Gholar, adding that Chan received $11,688 in fraudulent benefits.
Earlier this month,Yolo Superior Court Judge Paul Richardson sentenced Gholar to three years in prison for the misconduct with the girl. The judge also ordered Gholar to register as a sex offender for the rest of his life.
When he was arrested nearly a year ago, a Sacramento City Unified School District spokeswoman said Gholar was not an employee, but worked for the district in 2016. Gholar was working at the after-school program at John Still Elementary School in Meadowview, which is run by the Rose Family Creative Empowerment Center, according to the school’s website.
Prosecutors have said Gholar met the girl when she was in second grade; he was her after-school teacher. He was her teacher for the next three years. After the girl completed fifth grade, she and Gholar had no contact until the she was 12 and in seventh grade.
Witnesses testified in the trial that Gholar began communicating with the girl through Instagram messages on Jan. 19. The girl immediately told Gholar she was 12 years old. Over 12 hours of exchanging Instagram messages, Gholar asked the victim if she wanted to have sex, asked for provocative photos of her and sent her a sexually explicit photo of himself, according to the District Attorney’s Office.
The girl told her parents. Then, her parents and police posed as the girl and continued communicating through social media with Gholar. West Sacramento Police Department officers, pretending to be the girl, arranged to meet Gholar on Jan. 20. Prosecutors said the purpose of the meeting was for Gholar to have sex with the girl. They also said Gholar arrived at the meeting location with condoms, which were found when officers arrested him.
