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A 41-year-old Edinburg man was sentenced to prison for fraudulently obtaining unemployment benefits from the Department of Labor, according to a press release from the United States Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Texas.
Jose Luis Gonzalez pleaded guilty on March 21, 2023 and has been sentenced to a little over six years in prison followed by three years of supervised release.
Gonzalez was also ordered to pay $531,161 in restitution.
The court heard how Gonzalez kept his fraud going for a decade which caused substantial loss to the Department of Labor and the Texas Workforce Commission as well as how he kept the money from the citizens in the community who qualified and needed those benefits.
“Gonzalez and others committed substantial fraud against the taxpayers of Texas,” Alamdar S. Hamdani, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Texas, said in the press release. “By creating fictitious companies, forging documents and ultimately cheating the TWC, Gonzalez kept money from people who truly needed it.”
In August 2008, Gonzalez devised a scheme in which he would file fraudulent unemployment insurance claims with the TWC. He also created and provided several fraudulent documents in order to file for unemployment benefits.
Gonzalez would also advertise on Facebook to recruit and assist others to do the same. Those people would pay him to make fraudulent employment benefit claims.
“Specifically, Gonzalez would create a fictitious employer account with the TWC to include an employer name, address and similar information,” the release said. “The address he created was his address or an address he controlled.”
When the TWC would mail a notice to the fictitious employer to that address and Gonzalez would pretend to be the employer and respond to the letter, confirming the fictitious employment of the applicant.
According to the release, the scheme resulted in an approximate 50 fraudulent unemployment claims that totalled $531,161.
Nine other people involved have also pleaded guilty and have been sentenced.
Gonzalez will remain in custody pending transfer to a U.S. Bureau of Prisons facility which will be determined in the future.
