A man who previously worked as a high-level IT administrator at an Iowa hospital has been convicted of a meticulous and convoluted identity theft scheme that spanned more than three decades, ultimately resulting in the wrongful imprisonment of his victim, authorities said.
William Woods was homeless and living in Los Angeles in 2019 when he learned someone was racking up debt using his name. But when he raised his concerns with a bank branch manager, he ended up spending nearly two years in prison, accused of identity theft himself. As he continued to insist he was Woods in a desperate effort to clear his name, he was even sent to a state psychiatric hospital and drugged, according to court records.
Finally, last week, the former University of Iowa hospital administrator, who had assumed Woods’ identity for decades, pleaded guilty to two federal charges.
The man, Matthew David Keirans, 58, who lived in Hartland, Wis., was convicted of making false statements to an institution insured by the National Credit Union Administration and aggravated identity theft, according to a news release from the United States Attorney’s Office for Iowa. northern district. The charges carry a maximum sentence of 32 years in prison, as well as a $1.25 million fine and five years of mandatory supervised release following any prison sentence, the office said.
Ryan J. Foley / AP
No sentencing date has been set in the federal case, but Keirans spent 20 days in jail last year on Iowa state charges.
Meanwhile, a hearing is scheduled for next week in California to vacate Woods’ conviction, said Venusse Dunn, a spokeswoman for the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office.
Court records show the two first met when they both worked at a hot dog cart in Albuquerque, New Mexico, in the late 1980s.
There is no record of Keirans using his own name or Social Security number after 1988, and he began publicly taking the name William Woods in 1990, according to court documents.
Federal prosecutors have not provided any information about what precipitated the name change, said Tony Morfitt, a spokesman for the U.S. attorney in northern Iowa. Records indicate Kierans had a difficult childhood, running away from home at age 16, traveling across the country, stealing a car in San Francisco and getting arrested in Oregon, but never appearing in court.
Over the years, he married and had one child, all under the name Woods. He used a genealogy website to research Woods’ family history and used that information to fraudulently obtain a copy of Woods’ Kentucky birth certificate, federal prosecutors said.
Kierans used Woods’ ID card to get his job at the University of Iowa Hospital in Iowa City in 2013, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office. The office said he submitted false identification documents to the hospital while the hiring process was underway, including a fake I-9 form, Social Security number and date of birth, between other documents in Woods’ name.
While working remotely for the hospital from his home in Wisconsin, authorities said Keirans “was the key administrator of critical systems” within the hospital’s online infrastructure and that he had such seniority in this role that his access privileges were the highest possible. News of his conviction comes amid ongoing concerns over data breaches targeting hospital systems and health care networks.
Later, between August 2016 and May 2022, Kierans used Woods’ identity to obtain a series of loans from credit unions around the state totaling more than $200,000, prosecutors said.
After learning of the debt in 2019, Woods went to a Los Angeles branch of a national bank where Kierans had maintained outstanding deposits. He said he did not want to pay the debt and sought to close the accounts Keirans had opened in his name.
He provided his Social Security card, as well as his California ID card. But the accounts contained a lot of money, so the branch manager asked the real Woods a series of security questions. Unable to respond, the bank called police, according to court records.
Keirans, who was listed on the account under the name Woods, told police he did not authorize anyone in California to access his bank accounts. He then faxed police a series of fraudulently acquired identification documents, according to court records.
Police arrested Woods and charged him with identity theft and false identity theft. They insisted that Woods was actually called Matthew Kierans, misspelling his tormentor’s name. Court documents do not explain how police linked Woods or the bank accounts to that name.
Los Angeles police confirmed to The Associated Press that Woods had been arrested, but declined to comment further.
Because Woods repeatedly challenged the identity authorities imposed on him, a California judge declared him mentally incompetent to stand trial and sent him to a state psychiatric hospital, where he received psychotropic medication.
The real Keirans periodically called police and prosecutors as the case progressed. Told at one point the case was on hold until Woods regained mental capacity, court records show Keirans responded, “That assumes he does.”
Woods spent 428 days in the county jail and 147 days in a psychiatric hospital before being released after accepting a no-contest plea. He was ordered to pay a $400 fine and stop using the name William Woods.
But instead of stopping, Woods continued to push to regain his identity. One problem was that California was trying to recoup expenses related to his stay at the psychiatric hospital, according to court records.
Keirans complained in an email to Los Angeles prosecutors that Woods had filed 30 disputes on his credit report and had just spent two hours “clearing all that up.” He continued: “I need advice on what action to take at this stage.”
Undeterred, Woods applied to the University of Iowa Hospital, where Keirans earned more than $100,000 a year. Security referred Woods’ complaint to the University of Iowa police.
Keirans initially insisted in an interview that the victim was “crazy” and “needs help and should be incarcerated,” federal prosecutors said.
But a detective tracked down the biological father listed on Woods’ birth certificate and tested the father’s DNA against Woods’. The test proved that Woods was this man’s son.
When police confronted Keirans about the DNA evidence, he said, “My life is over” and “It’s all gone.”
Woods did not respond to AP efforts to seek comment through a court liaison who works with victims, and the Los Angeles public defender’s office did not respond to emails.
AP also called people believed to be close to Woods, but no one called back. One person texted back with one word: “Stop.”
The news stunned Keirans’ family and friends. Letters written to the court on his behalf described him as a good, kind and trustworthy father.
“I believe Matt’s motivation was simple: to create the family and home he did not have in his youth,” wrote his wife of 30 years, Nancy Zimmer, who described him working to help her while she was earning a doctorate in theology.
Their adult son identified himself as “the son of Matthew Keirans, formerly known as William Woods – in both cases known as Dad.”
Grub5
