At surface level, two employees stealing over $1 million in unemployment insurance benefits is bad already.

Now, couple that with the fact that the employees, both of whom were working in the Capital Region, left a digital paper by bragging about the crime over a text message conversation, and you have one of the most head-scratching crime busts you've seen in quite some time.

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Capital Region State Workers Busted for Insurance Fraud Worth $1.6M

According to a report from WNYT Channel 13 in Albany, two former state employees have admitted to a committing fraud, by way of stealing approximately $1.6 million in unemployment insurance benefits from the state, and using the funds for "personal benefit".

33-year old Carl Diveglia and 51-year-old Wendell Giles both pled guilty, with the former doing so on Thursday, August 26th. Both were convicted of mail fraud, which, according to WNYT, carries a sentence of up to 20 years in prison.

The kicker of this story, however, comes with how it was confirmed that Diveglia and Giles were the perpetrators. After filling out fraudulent unemployment benefit applications under the names of other people, Diveglia and Giles had accumulated approximately $1.6 million in benefit money.

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It was during this accumulation period, that Diveglia texted Giles an idea. He suggested the purchase of a vanity license plate to accompany Giles' newly-purchased vehicle, with the acronym TY PUA imprinted on it.

The acronym, as we would come to find out, was short for thank you pandemic unemployment assistance, to which Giles responded lol.

These two committed fraud, so, they deserved to be arrested and convicted already. That said, it takes a pretty cocky individual to openly brag about these crimes over text, knowing full-well that the person is creating a paper trail leading directly to them by sending the messages over the phone.

They did it anyway, and now, they'll be footing the bill for a long time.

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