PITTSBURGH, PA — In a shocking criminal case, 51-year-old Corey Mizell now faces six months of incarceration, to be followed by a two-year period of supervised release. This harsh punishment stems from his criminal conviction for embezzling money from disabled veterans’ accounts and carrying out a mail fraud scheme to snatch away pandemic unemployment assistance. The gravitas of his sentence was made public by the United States Attorney Eric G. Olshan this Monday.
Mizell, who was previously employed as an agent cashier at the H. John Heinz III Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Medical Center, found himself on the radar of law enforcement this January. A concerned sister of a bedridden veteran, baffled by the irregular transactions from her brother’s account, rang the VA Police alarm bell. As fate would have it, Mizell was the teller behind each questionable withdrawal.
With wide-eyed innocence, Mizell initially informed VA Police that someone had duped him. He stated that an unidentified fraudster misrepresented their identity to swipe the cash. The fledgling agent cashier painted himself as an easy mark for such a scheme. However, Inspector Gadget would have been proud of the VA Police, who uncovered that Mizell was the mastermind behind mysterious authorizations to withdraw funds from helpless patients either holed up from COVID or immobilized due to their disabilities.
The plot thickened when the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs Office of Inspector General (VA-OIG) discovered a noticeable renovation project at Mizell’s residence. Pressured by the tightening noose of investigation, Mizell finally coughed up a confession. He admitted to “fraudulently taking money…from accounts of veterans”. The wedding DJ cited the loss of income during the pandemic and accumulating bills as the triggers behind his actions. He confessed to pilfering from three veterans, estimating the tally of stolen funds at approximately $17,660, and promptly resigned from the VA in April 2021.
Mizell’s confession, though shocking, was not entirely transparent. Investigations revealed that he had also skimmed funds from a fourth veteran. Additionally, he cunningly applied for and pocketed pandemic unemployment assistance. A separate investigation by the U.S. Department of Labor Office of Inspector General exposed Mizell’s audacious move to apply for pandemic benefits electronically in April 2020. Despite his VA employment since 2016, Mizell falsely claimed he was not a federal employee. From May 2020, Mizell consistently presented a façade of unemployment, whereas, in reality, he was busy at work as an agent cashier. His web of lies allowed him to accrue pandemic benefits amounting to a whopping $38,400.
The gavel of justice, wielded by United States Senior District Judge Nora Barry Fischer, came down hard on Mizell. She rejected his appeal for a non-incarceration sentence, expressing her astonishment at Mizell, a veteran himself, conning other veterans. Judge Fischer noted that Mizell’s crimes weren’t merely against the government but represented a betrayal to veterans and their families, some of whom were so incapacitated they couldn’t even walk to his cashier window. Importantly, Judge Fischer instructed Mizell to serve the first part of his supervised release period on home arrest (following his prison stint), monitored electronically, and to reimburse over $57,000 to the defrauded veterans and the government.
This case saw the efforts of Assistant United States Attorney Brendan J. McKenna who prosecuted on behalf of the government. United States Attorney Olshan praised the Department of Labor Office of Inspector General and Department of Veterans Affairs Office of Inspector General for their exhaustive and joint investigation, which led to the successful prosecution of Mizell in this regrettable case.
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