A Franklin County grand jury has indicted a mother, daughter and the daughter’s boyfriend on multiple felonies, accusing them of stealing nearly $2 million in a pandemic unemployment fraud scheme, according to the Office of the Ohio Inspector General.Velma Cain, 48, her daughter Rashanna Burley, 24, and Burley’s boyfriend, Kyson Murphy, 25, each face charges including theft, money laundering, records tampering and corruption. Cain faces a theft in office charge.The Office of the Ohio Inspector General announced the charges on Thursday.The mother and daughter worked as contractors for the state processing claims for unemployment during the coronavirus pandemic. At the time, the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services was dealing with an unprecedented number of claims, including for pandemic relief funds like Pandemic Unemployment Assistance, according to the Inspector General’s investigation.Investigators allege that Cain improperly approved about $1.5 million and Burley approved about $350,000 in unemployment claims for relatives or personal associates.Burley worked for the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services from Dec. 15, 2020, to Jan. 13, 2021, after the department audited her work and identified what it called 20 fraudulent claims. Soon after, Cain got a job at the department Jan. 19, 2021, and worked there until Jan. 4, 2022, when the FBI got an anonymous tip about fraud.The Ohio Department of Job and Family Service distributed about $7.6 billion in pandemic unemployment benefits —necessitating the employment of contract workers to process the claims — and later identified millions of dollars of the disbursals as fraudulent, according to the Inspector General’s announcement.Investigators allege that Murphy, the father of Burley’s children, also participated in the scheme, sometimes by forging paperwork and creating fictitious identities to submit claims for unemployment assistance.In 2023 when investigators tried to interview Murphy, he was living at the Franklin County Jail. Murphy was involved in the 2021 robbery-turned-fatal shooting of Courtney Bruce, an aspiring rapper who went by “Boog the Bandit.” Murphy is serving 12-16 ½ years in prison after pleading guilty for involuntary manslaughter and robbery.jlaird@dispatch.com@LairdWrites
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