Man pleads guilty to stealing former coworker’s identity for 30 years

A high-level Iowa hospital systems administrator, Matthew Kierans, has admitted to stealing a coworker's identity and posing as William Donald Woods for more than 30 years, The Register reported.

On top of using Woods' identity to commit crimes and rack up debt, Kierans' elaborate identity theft scheme led to Woods' incarceration after Kierans' accused his victim of identity theft and Los Angeles authorities failed to detect which man was the true William Donald Woods. Kierans could face up to 32 years in prison, The Register reported, and must pay a $1.25 million fine.

According to a proposed plea agreement with the US Attorney's Office for the Northern District of Iowa, Kierans met Woods "in about 1988" when they worked together at a hot dog stand in New Mexico. "For the next three decades," Kierans used Woods' "identity in every aspect of his life," including when obtaining "employment, insurance, a social security number, driver's licenses, titles, loans, and credit," as well as when paying taxes. Kierans even got married and had a child using Woods' name.

Kierans apparently hatched the scheme in 1990 when he was working as a newspaper carrier for the Denver Post. That's when he first obtained an identification document in Woods' name. The next year, Kierans bought a vehicle for $600 using two checks in Woods' name, the plea agreement said. After both checks bounced, Kierans "absconded with the stolen vehicle to Idaho, where the car broke down and he abandoned it." As a result, an arrest warrant was issued in Woods' name, while Kierans moved to Oregon and the whereabouts of the real Woods was seemingly unknown.

Eventually in summer 2012, Kierans relocated to Wisconsin, researching Woods' family history on Ancestry.com and then fraudulently obtaining Woods' certified birth certificate from the State of Kentucky, seemingly to aid his job hunt. Sometime in 2013, Kierans was hired by a hospital in Iowa City to work remotely from Wisconsin as a "high level administrator in the hospital's information technology department," using Woods' birth certificate and a fictitious I-9 form to pass the hospital background check.

Over the next decade, Kierans earned about $700,000 in that role, while furthering his identity theft scheme. Between 2016 and 2022, Kierans used Woods' name, Social Security number, and date of birth and "repeatedly obtained" eight "vehicle and personal loans" from two credit unions, each one totaling between $15,000 and $44,000.

Woods only discovered the identity theft in 2019, when he was homeless and discovered that he inexplicably had $130,000 in debt to his name. Woods attempted to close bank accounts that Kierans had opened in Woods' name, and that's when Kierans went on the defense, successfully pushing to get Woods arrested to conceal Kierans' decades of identity theft.

LAPD fails to detect true identity

In 2019, Woods walked into the branch of a national bank in Los Angeles, telling an assistant branch manager that "he had recently discovered that someone was using his credit and had accumulated large amounts of debt," the plea agreement said.

Woods presented his real Social Security card and an authentic state of California ID card, but the assistant branch manager became suspicious when Woods could not answer security questions that Kierans had set for the bank accounts.

The bank employee called the phone number listed on the accounts, which was Kierans' number. At that point, Kierans correctly answered the security questions, and the assistant branch manager contacted the Los Angeles Police Department to investigate Woods.

As a result of LAPD's investigation—which included contacting Kierans and reviewing Kierans' fraudulent documents, which at times used a different middle name—Woods was arrested for unauthorized use of personal information. Subsequently, Woods was charged with committing felony crimes of identity theft and false impersonation, facing as much as three years' incarceration for each count.

Woods continued insisting that he was the real victim of identity theft, while the California court system insisted he was actually Kierans. This continued until December 2019 when a state public defender told a court that Woods did not have the mental competency to stand trial. The court ordered Woods to be detained in a publicly funded California mental hospital until his mental competency improved, where he was given psychotropic medication in 2020.

Ultimately, in March 2021, Woods was convicted of the felony charges and after his release, he was ordered to "use only" what California decided was his "true name, Matthew Kierans." In total, Woods spent 428 days in jail and 147 days in a mental hospital because California officials failed to detect his true identity.

Iowa detective uncovers identity theft scheme

Once Woods was released, he "made numerous attempts to regain his identity," the plea agreement said. But every attempt was thwarted by Kierans, who "repeatedly made false reports and statements to law enforcement officials in Wisconsin and California."

It wasn't until January 2023 that Woods finally discovered a path to regain his identity. After figuring out the name of Kierans' employer, Woods contacted the hospital's security department and complained that Kierans had stolen his identity. That call launched an internal investigation into Kierans' claims that he was Woods, with the hospital hiring an "experienced detective" who finally "unraveled" Kierans' elaborate identity theft scheme.

The experienced detective cracked the case by obtaining DNA from Woods and matching it with Woods' father, "which proved conclusively" that Woods was the father's son. This "genetic paternity comparison proved" that Woods "was the true" Woods, the plea agreement said.

Throughout the Iowa cop's investigation, Kierans told the detective that Woods was "crazy" and "should be locked up," warning that "he did not think the detective would be able to do anything about the identity theft issue since so many other people have worked on the case and he was fine 'just dealing with it' from here on out."

But Kierans' attempts to mislead the Iowa detective were not as successful as they were in LA. Once the Iowa detective had the DNA evidence, he asked Kierans who his father was, and Kierans "made a mistake," giving his actual adoptive father's name instead of Woods' father's name. The detective then confronted Kierans with the DNA evidence, and Kierans realized he'd been caught.

"My life is over," Kierans told the detective. "Everything is gone."

Kierans admitted to his crimes after the Iowa detective confronted him, including admitting that he "had misled the detective" in LA with the intent to get Woods arrested.

As part of Kierans' plea agreement, he is required to pay restitution to all victims, including Woods, the two credit unions that granted eight loans in Woods' name, and "any creditor" he also misled. Kierans must also "assist in mitigating any damages" incurred by Woods as a result of the identity theft, including repairing Woods' credit and removing Woods' name from all accounts opened or used by Kierans.

Kierans was also required to forfeit any real or fraudulent Social Security account number card, US passport, driver's license or ID card issued by a state, birth certificate, voter's registration card, financial documents, tax documents, and any other identification documents used to further his identity theft scheme.

Court documents show that any opposition to the plea agreement must be entered by April 15, after which the judge is to make a final ruling on sentencing.