Former Kentucky Cabinet for Health and Family Services employee pleads guilty to wire fraud and identity theft

Date: August 9, 2024

Contact: [email protected]

Frankfort, KY - A Frankfort woman, Brittany Joyce May pleaded guilty on Thursday, before U.S. District Judge Gregory Van Tatenhove, to committing wire fraud and aggravated identity theft.

According to her plea agreement, between July 2021 and May 2023, May was employed as an administrative specialist at the Kentucky Cabinet for Health and Family Services (CHFS). As part of her duties, May managed payments to providers who were eligible for payments under certain adoption and foster programs. In doing so, May input provider information into the computer resource directory, including their personal identifying information and banking information. To receive payments under these programs, providers submitted request paperwork to CHFS. Upon receiving those requests, May would initiate payments, via a wire transfer, to the provider's bank account. However, when some providers did not submit the required paperwork or stopped receiving payments because their services had expired, May would instead direct funds that would have been paid to them to four bank accounts that she owned and controlled.

To conceal these actions, May would submit false invoices, to make it appear as if the provider had requested payment. And knowing the system would automatically send notifications to the provider's listed address, indicating a payment had been made, May would change the provider addresses, to forward the notices elsewhere. From July 2021 to May 2023, May used the names and/or social security numbers of 45 providers in the computer resource directory to operate her scheme, and she further opened bank accounts using the personal identifying information of two providers.

In all, May misappropriated $444,663.77 in funds and initiated more than 540 fraudulent wire transfers to bank accounts she owned and controlled.

Carlton S. Shier, IV, United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Kentucky; Karen Wingerd, Acting Special Agent in Charge, Cincinnati Field Office, IRS Criminal Investigation (IRS CI); and Lesley Allison, Special Agent in Charge, United States Postal Inspection Service, Pittsburgh Field Division, jointly announced the guilty plea.

The investigation was conducted by the IRS CI and U.S. Postal Inspection Service. Assistant U.S. Attorney Andrea Mattingly-Williams prosecuted the case on behalf of the United States.

May is scheduled to be sentenced on November 5, 2024. She faces a maximum of 20 years in prison for the wire fraud charge, as well as a mandatory, consecutive two-year sentence for aggravated identity theft. However, any sentence will be imposed by the Court, after its consideration of the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines and the federal sentencing statutes.

CI is the criminal investigative arm of the IRS, responsible for conducting financial crime investigations, including tax fraud, narcotics trafficking, money-laundering, public corruption, healthcare fraud, identity theft and more. CI special agents are the only federal law enforcement agents with investigative jurisdiction over violations of the Internal Revenue Code, obtaining a more than a 90 percent federal conviction rate. The agency has 20 field offices located across the U.S. and 12 attaché posts abroad.