William Woods was homeless and living in Los Angeles when he learned that someone was racking up debt using his name.
But when he reported his concerns to the branch manager of a bank, he wound up spending nearly two years locked up, accused of identity theft himself. As he continued to insist he was Woods in a desperate effort to clear his name, he was even sent to a state mental hospital and drugged, court records show.
Finally this week, a former high-level Iowa hospital IT worker who had assumed Woods’s identity for decades pleaded guilty to two federal charges.
That man, 58-year-old Matthew David Keirans, who lived in Hartland, Wisconsin, faces up to 32 years in prison for making false statements to a National Credit Union Administration insured institution and aggravated identify theft.