York Man Sentenced To 13 Months In Prison For Pandemic Unemployment Fraud

HARRISBURG - The United States Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of Pennsylvania announced that Tanner Uffelman, age 29, of York, Pennsylvania, was sentenced on June 13, 2024, to time served (approximately 13 months’ imprisonment) by United States District Court Judge Jennifer P. Wilson for conspiracy to commit wire fraud.

 According to United States Attorney Gerard M. Karam, Uffelman was charged with submitting multiple false applications to states seeking unemployment compensation claiming that the unemployment was a result of the COVID19 pandemic. From 2020 to 2021, Uffelman submitted these false claims using identifications of numerous innocent victims. He and his conspirators submitted the false claims in Massachusetts, Maryland, North Carolina, and California. Uffelman pleaded guilty to the crime in January 2024, and admitted that the fraud scheme stole over $40,000 from the various states.

 At sentencing, Judge Wilson noted that at the time he was committing his federal offense, Uffelman was on supervision with York County authorities for unlawful contact or communication with a minor and corruption of minors arising from a 2018 conviction where he, as a 23-year-old man, had a corrupt relationship with a 14-year-old girl. The judge identified this as well as the over 13-months he spent in Dauphin County Prison as sufficient punishment for the federal crime he committed and imposed a time served sentence. Judge Wilson also ordered that Uffelman serve three years of supervised release with the United States Probation Office.

The case was investigated by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. Assistant U.S. Attorney Scott Ford is prosecuting 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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