Someone else's identity for 35 years. American Matthew David Keirans, 58, was found guilty on Monday April 1 of identity theft and false testimony before the National Credit Union Administration by a federal court in Iowa (United States), reports the newspaper local The Gazette of Cedar Rapids.
The story begins in 1988, when Matthew Keirans is a hot dog vendor in Albuquerque, New Mexico. He then worked with a certain… William Woods. It was at this moment that he decided to usurp the identity of his colleague. When he was unmasked, he admitted to using the name “in all aspects of his life,” whether it was working, getting married, getting insurance or paying taxes.
Wooden checks and consumer credits
As early as 1990, he managed to obtain an identification card from the State of Colorado in the name of William Woods. This allowed him to get a job at a fast food restaurant and then open a bank account. He then bought a car in 1991 with bogus checks, still under his assumed identity. After leaving Colorado for Idaho, he married in 1994 and had a child, whose last name is still Woods.
From then on, Matthew Keirans, hidden under the identity of William Woods, was no longer talked about much. In 2012, he managed to obtain a copy of the birth certificate of the real William Woods from the state of Kentucky, after carrying out research on a genealogy site, details The Gazette of Cedar Rapids.
He moved to Wisconsin the following year, where he worked remotely as a computer scientist for the University of Iowa Hospital. He held this position for 10 years without anyone suspecting the usurpation. He had a comfortable annual salary of 140,000 dollars per month, or 130,000 euros.
The fifty-year-old was thus able to take out numerous loans between 2016 and 2022 from local operators, still under the name of William Woods, for more than 200,000 dollars (185,000 euros), specifies the press release from the American justice system.
The real William Woods interned by the courts
Meanwhile, the real William Woods was living a much less enviable life, homeless in Los Angeles. It was in 2019 that he discovered that credits were being contacted under his name and that he had significant debts. He then went to a bank branch to explain his situation. To prove his good faith, he presented his California identification card and his social security card. But as he was not at the origin of the creation of the accounts, he was not able to answer the famous security questions.
The bank employee then contacted Matthews Keirans, the real owner of the accounts, who logically knew how to answer the questions and expressed concern that someone in California could have access to her accounts. Turnaround for the real William Woods who finds himself accused of not being... himself!
He was arrested for theft and identity theft. His fierce fight throughout the legal proceedings even led him to be considered “mentally unfit to stand trial” in February 2020. By court order, he was then sent to a psychiatric hospital in California where he received numerous psychotropic treatments even though he did not need them.
He ended up being sentenced to two years in prison and a fine of 400 dollars
(370 euros)
in March 2021. He was subsequently released, since he had already served his sentence in pre-trial detention and in prison. hospital. But he continued to fight to get his real name back.
One DNA test and everything falls apart
After discovering where Matthew Keirans was working under an assumed name, William Woods contacted University Hospitals of Iowa Security, who forwarded his complaint to the local university police department. An investigation was opened and a comparison of the DNA of the two men was carried out with that of William Woods' biological father, whose name was mentioned on the birth certificate. The result finally allowed the truth to come to light after 35 years of usurpation.
Matthew Keirans confessed everything during an interrogation on July 17, 2023, without explaining the reasons for this usurpation. He pleaded guilty at his trial this week. The date on which he will receive his sentence is not yet known, but he faces up to two years in prison for identity theft and up to 30 years in prison for false testimony before a national institution. He could finally be fined 1.25 million dollars
(1.15 million euros)
.