Commerce City man to serve three-year sentence for unemployment insurance, tax fraud under plea agreement with Colorado Attorney General’s Office
Jan. 29, 2024 (DENVER)—A Commerce City man charged with scamming Colorado’s unemployment insurance system during the pandemic will serve a three-year state prison sentence under a plea agreement announced today by Attorney General Phil Weiser.
Ryan Gerald Garbiso, 43, pleaded guilty on Jan. 9 to one count of identity theft, a class 4 felony, and one count of filing a false tax return, a class 5 felony, for fraudulently obtaining $25,051 in unemployment benefits from May 2020 through September 2020. Garbiso also agreed to pay restitution in the amount of $25,051 to the Colorado Department of Labor and Employment and $1,684 to the Colorado Department of Revenue.
“Unemployment benefits were a lifeline for thousands of workers and their families during the pandemic, and this defendant stole not only from those workers, but all Colorado taxpayers,” said Weiser. “This case is another step forward in holding accountable those who defraud our safety net and ensuring benefits go only to Coloradans who need them.”
According to an arrest warrant affidavit, Garbiso obtained the personal information of two deceased individuals and filed unemployment insurance claims in their names. Once these claims were approved, Garbiso accessed the funds in several transactions from bank accounts he owned. Garbiso then continued to provide false information to state officials in support of the fake claims, including impersonating his victims on multiple occasions.
The case is filed in Adams County District Court under case number 2022CR3680.
This case comes from the Colorado Unemployment Fraud Task Force that Weiser created with state and federal law enforcement partners in 2021 to investigate and prosecute suspected identity theft and fraud against the state’s unemployment insurance program. For all of 2022 and 2023, the task force referred 137 cases covering 240 claims to prosecutors throughout the state, seeking $2,761,891 in restitution.
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