Two women have been charged in federal courts in Oklahoma with theft of payments from federal agencies.
Laura Virginia Howard, 76, of Muskogee, admitted she embezzled $358,075 in Social Security retirement benefits from another person’s bank account over a 17-year period – from Feb. 28, 2007, through June 26, 2024 – and used the proceeds “for her and her sister’s personal gain.”
The charge arose from an investigation by the Social Security Administration’s Office of the Inspector General.
Jason A. Robertson, U.S. Magistrate Judge in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Oklahoma, accepted Howard’s guilty plea, and she will be sentenced later. Restitution is “mandatory, without regard to the defendant’s ability to pay,” a court document states.
Meanwhile, Lisa Beth Cornish, 52, was indicted June 17 in Oklahoma City’s Western District federal court on two counts of theft of public money. Those charges show that the federal government continues to “claw back” fraudulent federal payments issued during the COVID-19 pandemic.
One charge accuses Cornish of embezzling federal pandemic unemployment compensation payments, pandemic emergency unemployment compensation payments and lost wages assistance payments totaling $18,533 from the U.S. Department of Labor from June 12, 2020, through April 19, 2021.
The other charge alleges that between April 26, 2021, and June 28, 2021, Cornish stole approximately $2,400 in federal pandemic unemployment compensation payments that she “knew she was not entitled to…” She was released from custody on a $5,000 unsecured bond pending trial.