SCRANTON — This is an official press release from the U.S. Department of Justice (USAO - Pennsylvania, Middle), published as received.
SCRANTON - The United States Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of Pennsylvania announced that James G. Miller, Jr., age 53, of Scranton, Pennsylvania, was sentenced on February 28, 2025, to 41 months’ imprisonment by United States District Court Judge Robert D. Mariani for wire fraud.
According to Acting United States Attorney John C. Gurganus, between February of 2020 and January of 2022, Miller assisted coconspirators in transferring $1,582,179 in fraudulently obtained Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA), Lost Wage Assistance Payments (LWAPs), and Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) benefits through various bank accounts, Bitcoin transactions, and mailings. Miller acted as a money mule, receiving small sums of money in exchange for the use of his mailing address and bank accounts to transfer the fraudulently obtained funds to counterparts overseas.
The case was investigated by Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), the United States Postal Inspection Service (USPIS), the Office of Inspector General Departments of Labor (OIG-DOL) and Homeland Security (OIG-DHS), and the Office of Inspector General Social Security Administration (OIG-SSA). The case was prosecuted by former Assistant U.S. Attorney Phillip J. Caraballo and Assistant U.S. Attorney Sarah R. Lloyd.
On May 17, 2021, the Attorney General established the COVID-19 Fraud Enforcement Task Force to marshal the resources of the Department of Justice in partnership with agencies across government to enhance efforts to combat and prevent pandemic-related fraud. The Task Force bolsters efforts to investigate and prosecute the most culpable domestic and international criminal actors and assists agencies tasked with administering relief programs to prevent fraud by, among other methods, augmenting and incorporating existing coordination mechanisms, identifying resources and techniques to uncover fraudulent actors and their schemes, and sharing and harnessing information and insights gained from prior enforcement efforts. For more information on the Department’s response to the pandemic, please visit https://www.justice.gov/coronavirus.
Anyone with information about allegations of attempted fraud involving COVID-19 can report it by calling the Department of Justice’s National Center for Disaster Fraud (NCDF) Hotline at 866-720-5721 or via the NCDF Web Complaint Form at: https://www.justice.gov/disaster-fraud/ncdf-disaster-complaint-form
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