William Woods was homeless and living in Los Angeles when he learned that someone was racking up debt using his name. But when he reported his concerns to the branch manager of a bank, he wound up spending nearly two years locked up, accused of identity theft himself. As he continued to insist he was Woods in a desperate effort to clear his name, he was even sent to a state mental hospital and drugged, court records show. Finally this week, a former high-level Iowa hospital IT worker who had assumed Woods' identity for decades pleaded guilty to two federal charges, the AP reports.
- What will happen next? That man, 58-year-old Matthew David Keirans, who lived in Hartland, Wisconsin, faces up to 32 years in prison for making false statements to a National Credit Union Administration insured institution and aggravated identify theft. A sentencing date has not been set in the federal case, but Keirans spent 20 days in jail last year on related state charges in Iowa. Meanwhile, a hearing is set for next week in California to vacate Woods' conviction, said Venusse Dunn, a spokesperson in the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office.
- How did it start? Court records show the two men first met when they both worked at a hot dog cart in Albuquerque, New Mexico, in the late 1980s. There is no record of Keirans, who'd had a rocky childhood, using his own name or social security number after 1988, and he started to publicly assume the name William Woods in 1990, court documents show. He used a genealogy website to research Woods' family history and used that information to fraudulently obtain a copy of Woods' Kentucky birth certificate, federal prosecutors said. He used Woods' ID to get his job at the University of Iowa Hospital and to obtain a series of loans through credit unions in the state totaling more than $200,000, prosecutors said.
- How did Woods end up behind bars? Upon learning about the debt in 2019, Woods walked into the California bank. He said he didn't want to pay and sought to close the accounts that Keirans had opened in his name. He provided his social security card, as well as his California ID. But the accounts had a lot of money in them, so the branch manager asked the real Woods a series of security questions. Unable to answer them, the bank called police, court records say. Keirans, who was listed as Woods on the account, told police he didn't give anyone in California permission to access his bank accounts. He then faxed police a series of fraudulently acquired identification documents, court records show. Police arrested Woods and charged him with identity theft and false impersonation.
Read the entire wild story, which involves a detective and DNA evidence,
here. (More
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