Two sisters who once worked as call-takers helping Ohioans file unemployment claims during the pandemic are now accused of taking bribes and kickbacks to approve $1.9 million in fraudulent benefits — with one of them allegedly logging back into the state's system for weeks after she was fired to keep the scheme going.
Joirean Creel, 35, and Adriane Creel, 24, were charged Thursday in U.S. District Court in Cleveland with conspiracy to commit wire fraud, according to Cleveland.com. Federal prosecutors say the sisters worked for a subcontractor hired by the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services, and that they abused their access to the agency's computer system to remove fraud flags and authorize payments they had no legitimate authority to approve.
According to the outlet's report, the two were hired within a week of each other in February 2021 to work as call-takers, fielding questions and assisting with unemployment applications. Joirean Creel was fired the following month, in March 2021 — but prosecutors say that didn't stop her from getting back into the ODJFS system. Court filings cited by the same account state she continued using her own login credentials to access the system for weeks after her termination, and later used her sister Adriane's credentials as well.
How the Alleged Scheme Worked
Federal prosecutors allege the sisters approved payments for people they knew personally or who were referred to them by others, accepting bribes and kickbacks through cash-transfer apps and cash payments in exchange. Per the report, the two were paid hundreds or sometimes thousands of dollars for each claim they processed. In total, the modified claims resulted in $1.9 million in unemployment benefits being paid out.
Joirean Creel allegedly modified 145 claims after being fired, and her continued use of Adriane's login is said to have authorized an additional $60,000 in benefits on top of that. Prosecutors also allege Joirean fraudulently collected roughly $31,000 in unemployment benefits herself while she was employed by the subcontractor and the U.S. Postal Service. Adriane Creel, for her part, is accused of submitting false information to obtain about $26,000 in benefits from ODJFS and four other states, according to prosecutors.
At the time of the alleged conduct, Joirean Creel lived in Cleveland, while Adriane Creel lived in Bedford, Ohio. The sisters now reportedly live in Georgia — Joirean in Duluth and Adriane in Stone Mountain. The case against them was filed by information rather than grand jury indictment, and the sisters waived their right to a grand jury proceeding, a move that, per the report, typically signals a defendant intends to plead guilty. No court date has yet been set.
A Pattern of Insider Fraud Across Ohio
The case against the Creel sisters is far from an isolated one. Ohio's rapid, emergency reliance on third-party staffing agencies to process millions of Pandemic Unemployment Assistance applications in 2020 and 2021 gave thousands of non-state temporary workers administrative access to the state's uFACTS claims database, according to the Office of the Ohio Inspector General. That structural vulnerability has surfaced repeatedly in prosecutions tied to Ohio's pandemic unemployment system.
In a strikingly similar case, former contractor Andrew Kerobo siphoned more than $6.8 million from the state's PUA system after his own termination, resulting in a 7-to-10.5-year prison sentence for him and a co-conspirator, as Hoodline previously reported on the sentencing. Former ODJFS worker Alana Hamilton was separately indicted on 19 counts for allegedly leading a scheme that siphoned more than $4 million from the unemployment system between May 2020 and October 2021 by altering PUA claims, per the Chronicle-Telegram. And just last month, federal prosecutors in Cleveland charged a Lorain County mother and her two adult sons with conspiracy to commit wire fraud over an alleged attempt to steal more than $3.2 million in pandemic unemployment benefits and PPP loans using stolen identities and shell companies, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.
Why the Cases Keep Surfacing Years Later
During fiscal year 2021 alone, ODJFS disbursed roughly $7.6 billion in pandemic unemployment benefits, an unprecedented volume that severely strained the agency's oversight capacity and left the system exposed to fraudulent payouts, the Inspector General's office found. From the start of the pandemic through September 30, 2025, the agency identified approximately $1.8 billion in unemployment benefit overpayments statewide and has recovered roughly $108 million of that, Hoodline has reported.
Congress extended the federal statute of limitations for prosecuting COVID-19 pandemic relief fraud to 10 years in August 2022, according to the Potomac Law Group, which is part of why federal prosecutors are still bringing charges in 2026 over conduct that occurred in early 2021. To combat the fraud while it was unfolding, state and federal authorities formed a dedicated Pandemic Unemployment Assistance Investigative Group — made up of the Ohio Inspector General's office, the Ohio State Highway Patrol, the U.S. Department of Labor's Office of Inspector General, and ODJFS itself — to audit database access logs and trace unauthorized claim modifications, the watchdog agency said. ODJFS also partnered with the Ohio Department of Administrative Services in late 2020 and 2021 to deploy machine learning models and predictive analytics dashboards designed to automatically flag suspicious claims sharing data points, according to NASCIO.
Under federal wire fraud statutes, a conspiracy conviction carries a maximum penalty of up to 20 years in prison, a fine of up to $250,000, three years of supervised release, and mandatory victim restitution, according to Medvin Law. It remains unclear which specific subcontractor vendor employed the Creel sisters or how many other people may have paid bribes through referrals in the alleged scheme.
