An Orange County woman, along with two of her sisters and their brother, were sentenced on Thursday, April 24 to federal prison terms for a scheme in which they created nonexistent businesses, then claimed more than $1.1 million in unemployment benefits for purported employees of those fake businesses.
U.S. District Judge John A. Kronstadt sentenced Latrice Taylor, 42, of Buena Park, to a little over two years; Evelyn Taylor, 41, of South Los Angeles, to 18 months; Raschell Taylor, 35, of San Bernardino, to two years; and their brother Laron Taylor, 38, of California City, to four and a half years.
The defendants were ordered to pay $567,334 in restitution.
At the conclusion of a six-day trial in July 2024 in Los Angeles federal court, a jury found each of the Taylors guilty of one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
From February 2013 to July 2016, the defendants, along with their co-conspirators, stole more than $1.1 million in unemployment insurance benefits from the California Employment Development Department. The Taylors created and registered fake companies with EDD that had no real business or employees, and submitted fraudulent unemployment claims in their own and others’ names, sometimes using stolen identities. They withdrew cash using different EDD-funded debit cards from numerous ATMS across the greater Los Angeles area, federal prosecutors said.
The Taylors are the second set of defendants to be sentenced for participating in the scheme. Catrina Gipson, 49, of Moreno Valley, in Riverside County, in February 2023 was sentenced to four and a half years in prison and Vernisha Jolivet, 32, of Ripley, also in Riverside County, was sentenced in May 2022 to six months.