Gang members from Nassau County convicted of plotting to steal thousands of dollars in COVID relief

Two gang members from Nassau County have been convicted of agreeing to participate in schemes to defraud pandemic relief programs of hundreds of thousands of dollars in 2020 and 2021.

Akeem Chambers, 24, of Uniondale, and Jonathan Vazquez, 24, of Hempstead Village, were found guilty last week of conspiracy to commit wire fraud after a trial in federal court in Central Islip.

The two are members of the Hempstead branch of the Insane Crip Gang. They, along with other local members of the gang, conspired to rip off the pandemic unemployment insurance programs of five states, including New York, of at least $200,000, according to a federal indictment.

The gang members are among at least 16 people who live or work on Long Island who fraudulently received nearly $350,000 in jobless benefits designed to help employees thrown out of work when the economy was largely shut down to slow the coronavirus’ spread in 2020 and 2021, according to a Newsday analysis of federal court cases and state administrative decisions.

The wire fraud charge is among 52 counts, including murder, robbery and kidnapping, that Chambers and Vazquez were found guilty of after the 11-week trial.

Joseph Nocella Jr., U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York, said after the jury handed down its verdict: “The defendants and their co-conspirators … stole from government programs intended to provide services to the public and enriched themselves through the illicit proceeds of their criminal activity.”

Chambers’ attorney, Steve Zissou, said on Tuesday, “We are grateful that the jury found Mr. Chambers not guilty of many of the more serious charges he faced,” such as attempted murder and assault with dangerous weapons.

“By their verdict, the jury rejected the false testimony of the cooperating witnesses who testified against [Chambers]. … We are confident that the convictions will be vacated on appeal and a new trial will be ordered on the remaining counts,” the attorney told Newsday.

Vazquez’s attorney didn’t respond to a request for comment.

$2 million stolen from California program

Another defendant, Jerell Shaw, 34, of Millstone Township in New Jersey, was also convicted of conspiracy to commit wire fraud.

Shaw used the identities of nearly 130 people to fleece California’s unemployment insurance program of more than $2 million, according to evidence from a Bank of America investigation presented at trial. His attorney didn’t respond to a request for comment on Tuesday.

Greg Lawson, a spokesman for California's Employment Development Department, which oversees the state's jobless benefits programs, said more than $6 billion in stolen pandemic relief has been recovered through "the arrest and prosecution of thousands of fraudsters. These cases send a strong message that California holds fraudsters accountable," he said.

The New York state Department of Labor, through a spokesman, declined to comment.

Another defendant in the local case, Rob Pardo, 28, of Mount Sinai, pleaded guilty to the wire fraud charge in June. His attorney, John Kaley, said last year that Pardo “has accepted responsibility for his conduct and regrets his poor decisions.”

Pardo will be sentenced in October. The sentencings of Chambers, Vazquez and Shaw have not yet been scheduled, according to the court docket.

PPP loan programs defrauded

Nationwide, up to $135 billion was stolen from unemployment insurance — about 15% of the nearly $900 billion distributed during the pandemic, between April 2020 and May 2023 — according to the U.S. Government Accountability Office.

That makes unemployment insurance the second-largest source of pandemic fraud behind the business loan programs — Paycheck Protection Program and COVID-19 Economic Injury Disaster Loans — that together lost more than $200 billion based on estimates from the independent inspector general of the U.S. Small Business Administration.

Chambers, Vazquez and Shaw were also found guilty of participating in a scheme to rip off the PPP. They and others used the loan funds to pay for the gang’s acts of violence, the federal indictment states.

At least 35 Long Islanders have been accused of stealing more than $100 million from federal and state COVID relief programs, such as the PPP, COVID EIDL, Employee Retention Credit and the $800 million COVID-19 Pandemic Small Business Recovery Grant Program, the Newsday analysis shows.