A Dunkirk woman convicted of stealing government money received three years’ probation in a COVID-19 benefits fraud scheme that cost Puerto Rico’s labor department $67,524.
Angela Kellogg, 35, was sentenced by U.S. District Judge John Sinatra Jr., according to a Thursday release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of New York.
In July 2020, Kellogg gave a co-conspirator her identification information and Social Security number, knowing they would be used to obtain money she was not entitled to receive, prosecutors said.
She subsequently received an $11,586 check from the Puerto Rico Department of Labor and Human Resources. The federal money came through the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act, known as the CARES Act.
Kellogg neither lived nor worked in Puerto Rico, making her ineligible for the department’s Pandemic Unemployment Assistance funds, according to the release.
In September 2020, she deposited the check at an Inner Lakes Federal Credit Union bank in Westfield. She withdrew some of the money and gave it to her co-defendants as part of the scheme, prosecutors said.
Kellogg kept $5,000 for herself. The $67,524 loss reported by the department was the total loss from the scheme, rather than the amount she personally retained.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Franz Wright prosecuted the case. Homeland Security Investigations, led by Acting Special Agent-in-Charge Anthony Patrone, and the U.S. Department of Labor Office of Inspector General, led by Northeast Region Special Agent-in-Charge Jonathan Mellone, conducted the investigation.
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