Dajuan Hassan, a 36-year-old Los Angeles man, is expected to plead guilty Wednesday to one federal count of mail fraud, admitting he stole the personal information of fellow inmates while locked up in a California state prison and funneled it to an outside accomplice who used it to seek more than $235,000 in taxpayer-funded unemployment benefits.
According to mynewsla.com, Hassan is accused of participating in a scheme to steal both prison inmates' and identity-theft victims' personal information between July 2020 and January 2021. His co-defendant, 36-year-old South Los Angeles resident Prentiss Westbrook, was already sentenced in June to three years in federal prison and two years of probation for his role in the conspiracy.
How the Scheme Worked From Behind Bars
Federal investigators say Hassan harvested names, dates of birth and Social Security numbers belonging to fellow inmates and passed that data to Westbrook using the state prison phone system, according to the U.S. Department of Labor OIG. Westbrook then arranged for EDD-issued debit cards to be mailed to addresses under his control in Gardena, and he and others withdrew cash from ATMs throughout the region, investigators say.
Westbrook and his associates filed fraudulent claims with the Employment Development Department in the names of inmates and identity-theft victims, falsely representing that the claimants had recently lost jobs at California businesses or could not find work because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Pandemic Unemployment Assistance, the program targeted by the scheme, was created by Congress in 2020 in response to the pandemic and administered by the EDD.
Evidence Seized at a Gardena Apartment
In April 2021, federal agents executed a search warrant at Westbrook's Gardena apartment after fraudulent EDD debit cards were traced to addresses he controlled, records show. Agents seized a California DMV letter addressed to Westbrook, multiple EDD letters, and an EDD letter mailed in the name of an identity-theft victim.
Court documents disclosed by federal prosecutors also show that in August 2020, Westbrook knowingly possessed and used an Electronic Benefits Transfer debit card issued in a victim's name, according to the Department of Labor's Office of Inspector General. Westbrook admitted in his plea agreement that the scheme caused more than $235,000 in total losses across more than 10 victims.
Restitution, Sentencing and What Hassan Faces Now
U.S. District Judge Michael W. Fitzgerald ordered Westbrook to pay $235,398 in restitution as part of his June sentencing, mynewsla reports. Hassan now plans to plead guilty to a single count of mail fraud under 18 U.S.C. § 1341, and it remains unclear why he was incarcerated in state prison during the time the scheme was carried out.
That statute carries a maximum penalty of up to 20 years in federal prison and a $250,000 fine, according to Oberheiden P.C., with exposure rising to as much as 30 years and $1 million if the offense is found to have affected a financial institution or a federally declared emergency.
A Small Piece of a $20 Billion Statewide Fraud Wave
Hassan and Westbrook's scheme is a fraction of a much larger crisis that hit California's unemployment system during the pandemic. In late 2020, state prosecutors revealed that prison inmates statewide had filed more than 35,000 fraudulent EDD claims worth over $140 million, according to NBC Los Angeles, prompting Governor Gavin Newsom to stand up a state EDD task force.
By October 2021, the EDD confirmed that at least $20 billion — more than 11% of all pandemic unemployment benefits the state paid out — had been lost to fraud, as reported by AP News. The U.S. Department of Justice responded by launching a COVID-19 Fraud Enforcement Task Force in May 2021, creating strike forces to investigate organized pandemic relief fraud in California's federal judicial districts, per the U.S. Department of Justice.
Not the First Case Tying Prison Phones to EDD Fraud
Hassan's case echoes a similar scheme prosecuted in Sacramento, where inmates used contraband devices to coordinate California benefit theft with outside accomplices, resulting in a six-year sentence for that case's central figure. Hassan also has a documented history in Gardena: the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office reviewed a May 2017 nonfatal officer-involved shooting involving Hassan following a burglary investigation, ultimately declining to file charges against the officer.
