A Tennessee woman sentenced for 128 false unclaimed-property claims the state caught before paying
Marilyn Cook, 58, of Alcoa, Tennessee, who also used the names Marilyn Powell and Marilyn Sunset, was sentenced on August 26, 2021, to two years and five months in prison for filing false claims with California's State Controller's Office Unclaimed Property Division. In August and September 2014, using the alias Marilyn Sunset, Cook filed claims for 128 properties totalling $398,537, properties belonging to the United States Marshals Service and others, using a Tennessee state identification card obtained in the fictitious name to have the claim forms notarized, and a forged Department of Justice letter purporting to authorise her to collect on the Marshals' behalf. The Unclaimed Property Division identified every claim as fraudulent and did not disperse any property to Cook.
- Year
- 2021
- Where
- United States
- Outcome
- Sentenced
- Reported loss
- $0
- Victims
- Not stated in the sources
- Schemes
- Unclaimed property scam
- Last reviewed
- 2026-10-07
The facts, as recorded
- Cook used the alias "Marilyn Sunset" and a Tennessee state identification card obtained in that fictitious name to have her claim forms notarized, as the Unclaimed Property Division requires.
- She filed false claims for 128 separate properties, several belonging to the United States Marshals Service, certifying under penalty of perjury on each one that she was entitled to claim it.
- She submitted a forged letter on Department of Justice letterhead, falsely purporting to be signed by a former Assistant Attorney General, authorising "Sunset" to collect the Marshals' property on the government's behalf.
- The 128 falsely claimed properties totalled $398,537; the Unclaimed Property Division identified every claim as fraudulent and dispersed no property to Cook.
- The case was investigated by the FBI and prosecuted by the US Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of California, even though Cook lived in Tennessee, because the targeted unclaimed-property division was California's.
- Cook was sentenced on August 26, 2021, to two years and five months in federal prison.
Why this case matters
This is the version of the scheme that failed, by design of the system it targeted rather than by luck, and it is useful precisely because the state’s own controls worked. No real property owner lost anything; the loss that did happen was absorbed entirely by the fraud-detection process itself, in investigator time and in a federal prosecution.
Building an identity specifically to pass notarization
Cook did not merely claim to be someone else; she obtained a real, government-issued Tennessee identification card in a name she invented, “Marilyn Sunset,” specifically so the forged claim forms could clear the Unclaimed Property Division’s own notarization requirement. The fabricated identity existed only to satisfy one procedural check.
Impersonating the government to defraud the government
The forged Department of Justice letter, purporting to authorise “Sunset” to collect the US Marshals Service’s own unclaimed property, is a distinct escalation: rather than claiming to be an ordinary private citizen, Cook claimed federal authority on a federal agency’s own letterhead to extract federal property.
Caught before a dollar moved
All 128 claims, worth $398,537, were identified as fraudulent and none were paid. The case demonstrates that the identity-theft route into this scheme does not always succeed, and that a state’s own fraud-detection process, not a victim noticing anything, is frequently the actual point of failure for an operation like this.
The caveat
Cook was convicted and sentenced; this is a court’s final finding, not an allegation. The $398,537 figure is the total value of the properties she falsely claimed, not money she received. No property was dispersed to her as a result of this scheme.
Sources
- Tennessee Woman Sentenced to over 2 Years in Prison for Submitting False Claims for Unclaimed Property. US Department of Justice, Eastern District of California. Accessed 2026-10-07. Supports: All facts in this case file: Cook's name, aliases, age and location, the 2014 filing dates, the fabricated Tennessee ID used for notarization, the forged Department of Justice letter, the 128 properties and $398,537 total, that no property was actually dispersed, the FBI investigation, and the August 26, 2021 sentence of two years and five months.