A long-time aide to Democratic Rep. Danny Davis has been indicted on charges of claiming unemployment benefits during the coronavirus pandemic, even though he was working for Congress the whole time.
Prosecutors said Gerard Moorer filed for benefits in May 2020 and continued to collect the taxpayer-funded checks for 16 months, walking away with $31,887 in ill-gotten money.
Mr. Moorer, 42, faces three counts of wire fraud.
No lawyer was listed in court files, and an email to his congressional address wasn’t immediately returned Wednesday night.
The indictment says Mr. Moorer asserted he hadn’t been employed by the federal government since Oct. 1, 2018.
According to Legistorm.com, however, he has worked for Mr. Davis, an Illinois Democrat, since 2008 and has been deputy district director since 2013.
His salary was $55,300 in 2000 and $52,000 in 2021, the years when prosecutors said he was collecting unemployment.
In 2023, his salary jumped to $73,396, according to Legistorm’s data.
Mr. Moorer was himself a candidate for a seat in Illinois’ House of Representatives, losing the Democratic primary in 2020.
He is the latest in a long string of government employees who have been accused of taking advantage of the pandemic.
Former Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick, a Florida Democrat, resigned her seat last month after her colleagues concluded she siphoned ill-gotten money from a pandemic contract for her family health care firm into her first congressional campaign.
She had said she wasn’t involved with the firm collecting a payment of about $5 million from Florida instead of the roughly $50,000 it was due. House investigators said $3.6 million of that money made its way into her campaign.
Others, ranging from federal IRS and Small Business Administration employees to local workforce agency employees, have also been snared by pandemic fraud cases.
For more information, visit The Washington Times COVID-19 resource page.
