NEW YORK – Two other women pleaded guilty to a $400,000 scheme to defraud a New York City program that offered free hotel rooms to help people with COVID-19 isolate themselves, prosecutors say.
On Wednesday, Heaven West was the fourth woman connected to the scheme to plead guilty, the city’s Investigations Department said in a statement. The 22-year-old Brooklyn native pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud, one felony.
West’s statement came a day after one of his accomplices also accepted his role in the plan. Tatiana Benjamin, also known as Ta Banks and Lyric Muvaa, pleaded guilty to the same charge on Tuesday. Both sentences are scheduled for May 18, 2023, when West and Benjamin, 28, could each face up to 20 years behind bars.
“With these guilty pleas, all four defendants are held accountable for the misuse of a city program intended to serve health care workers, COVID-19 patients and others impacted by the pandemic, for their personal gain.” Investigations, Jocelyn Strauber.
Benjamin and West were charged in October 2021, along with Tatiana Daniel and Chanette Lewis, with a scheme to defraud New York’s Free Hotel Room Isolation Program, which was intended to provide free hotel rooms to those isolating due to a COVID-19 infection or healthcare workers who needed to self-isolate due to exposure to the virus.
The criminal quartet falsely claimed to be healthcare workers and used Facebook to advertise and sell the fraudulently obtained hotel rooms to people who didn’t meet the criteria to participate in the program, according to the DOI. The woman made hundreds of thousands of dollars at the height of the pandemic, selling rooms from April to July 2020.
The DOI said the women sold about 1,936 hotel room nights to people during those few months.
Lewis, 31, pleaded guilty to two counts of wire fraud: the hotel plan and a second, much longer plan to defraud the New York City Housing Authority. The Brooklyn woman had been accused of submitting to NYCHA false protective orders, letters from the district attorney and memos from doctors “attesting to alleged health problems that allowed her to fraudulently obtain public housing benefits for herself and others ». That scheme worked from July 2020 until Oct. 21, the DOI said.
Daniel, 28, pleaded guilty in November.
