Woman gets 18 months
for welfare fraud

A Mililani woman admitted she gambled away most of the more than $93,000 she stole from a state program to help people get off welfare.

U.S. District Judge David Ezra sentenced Tracy Rodrigues, 33, to 18 months in federal prison yesterday for a two-year scheme to defraud the state Department of Human Services, saying she took money from people who needed it most.

Rodrigues was a former case manager for Maximus, a private company contracted by the state Human Services Department to help unemployed clients obtain job training through the First to Work program. To assist clients, Maximus administered federal and state grant funds to help defray child-care costs for clients trying to get into the work force. Rodrigues' responsibilities included verifying clients' eligibility and disbursing monthly child-care benefits to clients.

In October, Rodrigues pleaded guilty to bank fraud, wire fraud and theft in two separate schemes beginning in April 2001 and ending in April 2003.

She admitted to obtaining $59,830 from checks belonging to Maximus' clients, forging them and depositing the money into her account. She also admitted that from June 2002 she caused funds in excess of the allowable child-care benefits to be deposited into her clients' Electronic Benefits Transfer accounts. Using the clients' transfer cards and personal identification numbers, she withdrew the excess amounts totaling $33,239.

"The cunning that you used to pull this off is beyond belief," said Ezra, who agreed with prosecutors that her conduct was not an impulsive act, but one that required calculation and an extreme amount of planning to avoid getting caught by authorities and by the clients she served. "This was purely for her own personal benefit and nothing less."

He said he was "floored" by the amount of checks she forged, which are detailed in page after page of the federal complaint. "It just is incredible to me you got away with it as long as you did."

The defense asked for a term on the lower end of advisory guidelines, which called for a sentence between 12 to 18 months. Attorney Keith Shigetomi said Rodrigues is remorseful and cooperated early on by agreeing to plead guilty.

Yesterday, Rodrigues tearfully apologized to the court, saying she takes full responsibility for taking money that did not belong to her and was designated for people in need.

She said she knows she needs to spend some time in prison, but asked that part of it be spent in a community program that will enable her to work and begin repaying the money.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Tracy Hino acknowledged that Rodrigues cooperated in the investigation, but asked that she be sentenced on the higher end of the guidelines.

He argued that the fraud, which involved 275 transactions, occurred over an extended period and that she engaged in two separate schemes -- bank fraud and wire fraud -- during that time. Her scheme shifted from stealing checks and cashing them to withdrawing money using her clients' transfer cards.

Ezra allowed Rodrigues to turn herself in on Oct. 3 to begin serving her time.

After completing her prison term, Rodrigues will be placed on five years of supervised release, during which she will have to repay the Department of Human Services $93,069.