York County Woman Sentenced For Fraud Related To Pandemic Unemployment Assistance Benefits

HARRISBURG – The United States Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of Pennsylvania announced that Tami Mateljan, age 47, of York, Pennsylvania, was sentenced on October 11, 2022, by U.S. District Court Judge Sylvia H. Rambo to two years of probation for conspiring to commit wire fraud. Mateljan was also ordered to pay $8,427 in restitution.

According to United States Attorney Gerard M. Karam, Mateljan previously admitted that between October 2020 and December 2020, conspirators obtained pandemic unemployment assistance (PUA) benefits from Colorado and Ohio by using the names and personal information of other individuals without authorization. The states transferred the fraudulently obtained PUA benefits to accounts owned by Mateljan. She then used some of the money for her own benefit and transferred the remaining money to conspirators in other countries, including Nigeria.   

The case was investigated by Homeland Security Investigations. Assistant U.S. Attorney Carlo D. Marchioli prosecuted the case.On May 17, 2021, the Attorney General established the COVID-19 Fraud Enforcement Task Force to marshal the resources of the Department of Justice in partnership with agencies across government to enhance efforts to combat and prevent pandemic-related fraud. The Task Force bolsters efforts to investigate and prosecute the most culpable domestic and international criminal actors and assists agencies tasked with administering relief programs to prevent fraud by, among other methods, augmenting and incorporating existing coordination mechanisms, identifying resources and techniques to uncover fraudulent actors and their schemes, and sharing and harnessing information and insights gained from prior enforcement efforts. For more information on the Department’s response to the pandemic, please visit https://www.justice.gov/coronavirus.

Anyone with information about allegations of attempted fraud involving COVID-19 can report it by calling the Department of Justice’s National Center for Disaster Fraud (NCDF) Hotline at 866-720-5721 or via the NCDF Web Complaint Form at: https://www.justice.gov/disaster-fraud/ncdf-disaster-complaint-form.

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