A Tucson woman, Koreasa Maria Williams, was sentenced on September 30, 2022, to 136 months in prison after previously pleading guilty to two counts of wire fraud.
The 47-year-old Williams was also ordered to pay restitution to her victims. Her sentence was ordered to run concurrent to a 51-month sentence for an earlier annuity fraud scheme.
Williams, a licensed insurance agent, defrauded an 80-year-old client of over $1 million.
According to the Department of Justice, on October 2018, realizing she was under investigation for the earlier annuity theft scheme, Williams advised her victim to cash out eight life insurance policies and obtain approximately $1 million, under the false promise that the life insurance funds would be better invested in annuities. She then tricked the victim into writing two checks totaling over $1 million to a law firm under the guise that the law firm worked for Williams’ annuity company and that the funds would be used to purchase an annuity for the victim.
Williams then delivered the checks from the victim and told the law firm the checks were a loan from her “rich uncle.” She then directed the law firm to use the money to pay back multiple victims from the earlier annuity theft scheme in an unsuccessful attempt to avoid criminal charges.
After Williams was indicted in the annuity theft scheme and released on bond in May 2019, she deceived the victim into giving her additional funds between June 2019 and December 2019. Williams then used that money for herself and her family over the next six months via thousands of dollars in bulk cash withdrawals, supermarket and convenience store debits, car payments, cable fees, movie theater purchases, and donations to a religious ministry in North Carolina with which Williams was affiliated, her local church, and a local charity.