Arizona woman gets years in prison for using stolen identity to get health care
Between September 2022 and March 2024, Shannon Lee Smith, 48, used another woman's name to fraudulently obtain medical care from various hospitals and ambulance providers, according to a statement from the Maricopa County Attorney's Office.
The woman discovered her identity had been stolen when she received a bill from her insurance company for services she never received, the County Attorney's Office statement said.
Smith received care at the Banner Desert Medical Center in Mesa, according to her indictment. She was ordered to repay Honor Health, Maricopa Ambulance, Radiology Partners, Mayo Clinic and Aetna, the insurance company, according to her plea agreement.
"The impact of identity theft goes far beyond the financial implications," said Maricopa County Attorney Rachel Mitchell. "It takes away a victim's peace of mind and leaves them to deal with the fallout of having false information tied to their name. I am proud of the work our prosecution team has done to hold the defendant accountable and allow the victim to start reclaiming her life."
Victimized: Arizonans' stolen personal information used in large-scale fraud scheme
This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Arizona woman gets prison for using stolen identity for health care
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Miami Herald
2 days ago
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To dodge federal rule, immigrants moved from Florida jails - and sometimes moved right back
ORLANDO, Fla. - Four Guatemalan siblings, detained as undocumented immigrants after a traffic stop, spent several days last month at the Orange County Jail before being picked up in a van and driven around for hours. Finally they reached their destination, their attorneys say: Right back at the Orange County Jail. This directionless odyssey - similar to what some other detainees across Florida have faced in recent months – happened because of rules limiting the number of days an undocumented immigrant can be held in a local facility before federal officials must take custody. With the Trump administration's push for "mass deportation" filling federal detention beds, detainees are being transferred from facility to facility because the switch restarts the clock and gives federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents more time to pick them up. 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Three days after that, he was again transported back to Orange County Jail, his mother said. Roughly four days later he called his mother saying he had reached Alligator Alcatraz. Only his calls offered clues that let Fernandez Silva search for her son in jail databases, she said. "It's clear what the counties are doing, they're trying to create a legal loophole to a constitutional obligation to not hold people for more than the 72 hours," said Mich Gonzalez, a South Florida-based immigration attorney who called the transfers "alarming." Gonzalez said conditions for inmates who move around are different than for those housed in a single jail. "They're shackled, they're handcuffed, sometimes they're also waist-chained," Gonzalez said. "They're not provided proper food like when they're in custody at a county jail, where there are … general rules that you're going to get three meals a day and access to water. But when you're being transported and transferred, that goes out the window." In June, a Mexican man was arrested while his boss, a U.S. citizen, was driving him and his brother to a construction site. Both were passengers in the car and both had permits to work in the U.S., said the wife of one of the brothers. She spoke with the Sentinel on the condition of anonymity as she worries her comments could make her a target of immigration authorities. For weeks after her husband's arrest she did not know where he was. He would call from an Orange County number but he did not appear in the correction system's database. He told his wife he was put into a van and taken somewhere, but returned the next day to Orange County Jail. "I didn't hear from him for three days … I was so scared," She said in Spanish. "He spent so much time in Orange County Jail that when he returned he knew it was the same place." Advocates for the family met with officials at Orange County Corrections in early July to help find him. Six hours later, he was finally located in a county jail cell, they said. He had been given a different inmate number upon his return, which contributed to the confusion. Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri confirmed there has been some shuffling involving his facility but defended it, saying it stems from "a capacity issue" that can prevent detention centers from accepting detainees when their 72-hour clock ticks down. "If the transportation system is overloaded or there's no room at Krome … that's when it backs up and they have to put them into the IGSA jails" such as Orange, Gualtieri said. Gualtieri serves on Florida's Immigration Enforcement Council, which has sounded an alarm that federal detention space can't keep up with the pace at which Florida law enforcement agencies are arresting undocumented immigrants. The board has called on the federal government to allow more local jails to house detainees, rather than send them to the seven jails in Florida with IGSA agreements while they await ICE detention. Copyright (C) 2025, Tribune Content Agency, LLC. Portions copyrighted by the respective providers.
