Numbers Mean Something | Georgia | Unemployment Fraud

The numbers will remind us how many losses we had due to the COVID-19 pandemic, like the losses incurred by schemes created from fraudsters like Macovian Doston, Shatara Hubbard, Torella Wynn, who defrauded the Georgia Department of Labor (GaDOL) out of tens of millions of dollars in benefits meant to assist unemployed individuals during the COVID-19 pandemic.

To carry out their scheme, Doston, Hubbard, and Wynn created several fictitious employers accounts. For each fake business they fabricated lists of purported employees using the personal identifiable information (PII) from thousands of identity theft victims. These fraudsters obtained PII’s after paying an employee of an Atlanta-area healthcare and hospital network to unlawfully retrieve and share patients’ PII from the hospital’s databases. After creating fictitious accounts with these stolen IDs, Doston, Hubbard, and Wynn filed literally gobs of unemployment insurance claims on the GaDOL website.

The numbers are astonishing. Starting in March 2020, Doston, Hubbard, and Wynn were filing 277 claims on average a week. While collecting $1.66 million a month in fraudulent claims, the average claim was $1,504. Doston, Hubbard, and Wynn filed more than 5,000 fraudulent unemployment insurance claims with the GaDOL resulting in at least $30 million in stolen benefits.

On May 28, 2025, Doston, Hubbard, and Wynn were sentenced to one year in prison and three years of supervised release for unemployment fraud. They were also ordered to pay restitution in an amount to be determined at a later date.

Excellent job by the U.S. Postal Service Office of Inspector General (USPS-OIG) in this case.

Today’s Fraud of The Day is based on article “Three sentenced for $30 million COVID-19 unemployment fraud” published by The Tifton Gazette on May 23, 2025.

Three Georgians were sentenced Thursday for their participation in a scheme to defraud the Georgia Department of Labor, out of tens of millions of dollars in benefits meant to assist unemployed individuals during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Macovian Doston, 31, of Vienna, was sentenced to 15 years in prison followed by three years of supervised release and ordered to pay restitution in an amount to be determined at a later date.  Shatara Hubbard, 36, of Warner Robins, was sentenced to 6 years in prison followed by three years of supervised release and ordered to pay restitution in an amount to be determined at a later date.