US Man Stole Coworker's Identity For 30 Years, Sent Victim To Jail And Mental Hospital

An American man who stole a coworker's identity for three decades, leading to the victim's wrongful imprisonment and forced medication, has had his 12-year prison sentence upheld. Matthew David Keirans challenged the 144-month term and the conditions of his supervised release, calling them unreasonable. However, a federal appeals court on Thursday (Apr 23) rejected his challenge, maintaining the original sentence for the decades-long fraud, as per CBS News.

Keirans worked with his victim, William Woods, at a hotdog cart in Albuquerque, New Mexico, in the late 1980s. As per Woods, Keirans stole his wallet in 1988 and used the information on his social security card to apply for a driver's license as William Woods.

After 1988, Keirans vanished from official records, effectively erasing his true identity. By 1990, he had publicly reinvented himself as William Woods, a lie he maintained for over 30 years. Under this stolen name, he married, raised a child, and built a career at the University of Iowa Hospital, where he leveraged Woods' credit to secure loans.

When Woods attempted to reclaim his identity in 2019, Keirans managed to convince the police that the former was the imposter. Subsequently, Woods was arrested and spent 428 days in jail and 147 days in a state mental hospital. He was ordered by the court to use what it believed was his true name: Matthew Keirans.

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After securing his release, Woods continued pursuing the case to reclaim his identity. A detective helped Woods track down the biological father listed on his birth certificate and tested his DNA to confirm that Woods was his son. In July 2023, the detective confronted Keirans with this evidence. At that point, Keirans admitted that he had used Woods's identity for several decades, produced false documents, and lied to law enforcement.

A three-judge panel at the US Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit found no abuse of discretion, noting that throughout three decades of living under Woods' identity, Keirans hid his true identity from his wife and gave his child Woods' surname.