Tampa Con Man Sentenced for COVID-19 Unemployment Scam

Tampa, FL – In a brazen case of COVID-19 unemployment insurance fraud, Mehdi Tazi, a 29-year-old Tampa man, has been sentenced to five years in federal prison for his role in a conspiracy to commit wire fraud, aggravated identity theft, and a substantive count of aggravated identity theft.

Tazi, who pleaded guilty on February 2, 2024, was ordered to pay $1,070,647 in restitution to the victims of his scheme, which was carried out in conjunction with his co-conspirators, Steve Aloysius Moodie Jr., Tyree Wingfield, and Melinda Sue Hernandez. The four defendants were responsible for stealing the identities of countless individuals and using them to file false unemployment claims with various state workforce agencies.

The scheme, which ran from approximately June 2020 through April 2021, was masterminded by Hernandez, a medical assistant at a Tampa Bay area hospital, who used her position to gain access to patient personal identifying information (PII). She then shared this information with Moodie, who used it to file false unemployment claims with state workforce agencies.

Tazi, Moodie, and Wingfield then used the stolen identities and PII to submit fraudulent unemployment insurance claims, which were used to obtain UI benefits. These benefits were then transferred to bank accounts or loaded onto debit cards issued in the names of the victims. The defendants then used the fraudulently obtained debit cards to withdraw money from ATMs and purchase personal items.

Law enforcement estimated that the total intended loss caused by the fraudulent UI claims was between $1.5 million and $3.5 million. The case was investigated by the United States Postal Inspection Service and Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), and was prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorney Greg Pizzo.

The COVID-19 pandemic created a perfect storm for scammers like Tazi and his co-conspirators, who took advantage of the expanded unemployment benefits made available by the federal government in response to the crisis. The pandemic-related unemployment insurance fraud was a major focus of the Department of Justice’s COVID-19 Fraud Enforcement Task Force, which was established in May 2021 to investigate and prosecute pandemic-related fraud.

Tazi’s sentence serves as a warning to would-be scammers that the Department of Justice is committed to holding accountable those who seek to profit from the pandemic. The sentence also serves as a reminder to the public that unemployment insurance fraud is a serious crime that can have devastating consequences for victims.