By Michael Hickman
What the Government Alleged
During the pandemic, Congress opened the doors to emergency relief — EIDL loans and PPP funds — designed to keep small businesses and sole proprietors afloat. Where there’s a fast-moving river of federal money, there are people waiting downstream with a net, and federal prosecutors in the Southern District of Alabama built a wire fraud and conspiracy case around a ring accused of doing exactly that: stealing real people’s identities, standing up fake bank accounts in their names, and walking off with hundreds of thousands of dollars in fraudulent loan proceeds. All of it was done online, without anyone walking into a bank.
As part of its investigation the Government secured a search warrant of my client’s home. She shared the home with her sister. The Government found multiple documents for fake businesses and social security numbers stolen from people in our community. The Government also found about $80,000 in cash.
The Government also had a video of my client driving her car through a Regions drive-up ATM. Her sister was in the passenger seat of the car. My client can be seen on video putting the card into the ATM, entering a passcode, and withdrawing money. Turns out the account was not in her name, her sister’s name, or anyone else they knew. The account had been funded with a COVID loan obtained with a fraudulent identity. It had all been set up online. No visit to the bank required.
The government secured an indictment alleging that the defendant and many other defendants submitted false paperwork to secure COVID loans and set up fraudulent accounts to deposit the money in. Some of the defendants actually did just that. They also used stolen identities to set up the accounts. In this case the government claimed that my client submitted a false loan application using a stolen identity. According to the government, she used the stolen identity to open up a Regions Bank account and had the money wired to that account. The Government sent a plea agreement early on in this case and offered minimum time in prison if my client agreed to plead guilty.
She never signed it.
The Card She Thought Was Her Sister’s
Here’s what the government’s version of the case left out, and what became the center of our defense: the debit card in my client’s hand wasn’t something she’d set up fraudulently. It came from her sister, who told her it was her own account. My client had no reason to think otherwise — family members hand each other cards and ask for favors all the time, and nothing about that exchange looked like a federal crime from where she was sitting.
What she didn’t know was that the account behind that card had been set up fraudulently. She was handed a tool built for fraud and told it was something ordinary. That distinction — knowledge versus innocence, intent versus a favor for family — is the entire difference between a conviction and a dismissal.
Taking the Case Apart Before It Ever Got to Trial
We didn’t wait for a jury to sort this out. We went after the government’s theory directly, on paper, before we went to trial.
My office pulled apart the financial records the government was relying on and walked them through it line by line: the accounts that had been fraudulently created, who actually opened them, who moved the money, and more importantly that my client had nothing to do with any of it. Turns out the sister who she was living with had a boyfriend. She and the boyfriend were stealing identities and using them to get the COVID money and set up the fake accounts. They also recruited others to help in the crime. The papers and money in the home belonged to her sister, not to my client. The paper trail didn’t show a woman setting up fake identities or engineering a scheme. It showed someone else’s fraud that had brushed up against her life.
We backed that up with a detailed statement my office prepared, laying out exactly how my client came into possession of that debit card and why she had no reason to believe it wasn’t her sister’s own account. Financial records plus a credible, consistent account of what she actually knew and when — that combination is what moves a prosecutor’s office, because it’s the same combination they’d need to convict.
The Outcome
The case never went to trial. My client never pleaded guilty to anything, because she wasn’t guilty of anything. After reviewing what our investigation turned up, the government dismissed all charges against her.
That’s not a technicality, and it’s not a plea deal dressed up to look like a win. It’s the government looking at its own case, looking at what we’d shown them, and doing the right thing: dismissing the charges against my client.
Here’s the part that shows what hard work and preparation can do: My client wasn’t the only defendant in this case. Some of the others pleaded guilty. Some took it to trial. Every single one of them left the courthouse with a conviction. Every one, except my client. She’s the only defendant in the entire matter who walked away clean — not because she took a deal, not because she got lucky, but because the evidence never put her where the government said it did and she was brave enough to tell me to keep fighting.
Past results do not guarantee future outcomes, as every case depends on its own unique facts and circumstances.