Former California EDD employee sentenced to federal prison for COVID fraud
A former state worker and her boyfriend at the time were each sentenced Friday to 20 months in federal prison for stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars that was slated to support Californians unemployed during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Phyllis Hope Stitt, 61, worked at the Employment Development Department as an employment program representative, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Los Angeles. The Carson resident worked for more than a decade with the department that manages California’s unemployment insurance program, according to public salary data.
From March 2020 to September 2021, Stitt accessed personal information about victims, including their names, dates of birth and Social Security numbers, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said in a Friday news release.
She then used that information to file unemployment insurance benefit applications for those individuals, without their knowledge, according to the news release. Stitt certified the applications and fraudulently confirmed those individuals were out of work because of the pandemic, but actively seeking a job. The Justice Department said that Stitt backdated the fake unemployment insurance requests to inflate the claim size.
The former EDD employee used a mailing address for those applications that her long-term boyfriend at the time, 64-year-old Kenneth Earl Riley of South Los Angeles, had access to. Riley then used a system of debit cards and bank accounts to access the money via retail purchases, ATMs and bank transfers, according to the Justice Department.
U.S. District Judge André Birotte Jr. directed Stitt and Riley to pay $768,958 and $611,458 respectively in restitution in addition to their federal prison sentences.
This story was originally published May 10, 2025 at 5:35 PM.
