Ticked Off | Massachusetts | Housing and Covid-19 Fraud

In 2022, Alihea Jones worked remotely for the Massachusetts Department of Housing and Community Development (DHCD) where she worked with the Residential Aid to Families in Transition (RAFT) program. A program which provides funds to assist low-income Massachusetts residents facing eviction and other housing emergencies. However, after just six months of employment, Jones was fired. But while the DHCD may have fired her they didn’t sever all connection from her. Jones was still logged into Massachusetts RAFT database.

Shortly after her termination, Jones accessed the files of four RAFT program participants and authorized the electronic payments to set for their landlords in the amounts of $7,500, $8,800, $6,925 and $10,000. However, Jones changed the routing and bank account numbers from the landlords’ accounts to four unauthorized accounts in the state of Georgia, accounts established in the name of Jones’s business, Beauty Concepts by Alihea, LLC, Jones’s personal account; and the accounts of persons identified in the charging document as “Friend A” and “Friend B.” After these transfers went through, Friend A and Friend B each paid Jones a $2,000 kickback. That’s what friends are for!

Stealing from the poor was not Jones’s only scheme in fraud. Prior to her housing benefit scheme, in 2020, Jones submitted a Paycheck Protection Program loan application to a Massachusetts lender falsely stating that Beauty Concepts had 17 employees and an average monthly payroll expense of $74,800. None of which was true and as a result to her fraudulent application, Jones’s received $187,000 in forgivable loans.

On March 4, 2025, Jones was sentenced to 10 months in prison and full restitution of $222,074, with $33,225 payable to the DHCD and $188,849 payable to the SBA.

Shout out to the Inspector in Charge of the U.S. Postal Inspection Service’s Boston Division with this case.

Today’s Fraud of The Day is based on article “Ex-state employee gets prison time for defrauding Mass. housing agency after being fired from job” published by Boston 25 News on March 4, 2025.

A former state employee will serve time in federal prison for defrauding a Massachusetts housing agency after being fired from her job, and defrauding the U.S. Small Business Administration in connection with the pandemic Paycheck Protection Program.

Alihea Jones, 51, of Brandon, Fla., was sentenced in federal court to 10 months in prison, to be followed by three years of supervised release, U.S. Attorney Leah Foley said in a statement on Monday. Jones was also ordered to pay $222,074 in restitution and to forfeit $222,074.