A Pennsylvania woman built FEMA paperwork for nearly 200 people, for half of whatever it paid out
Jasmine Williams, 34, of Plymouth Meeting, Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, recruited nearly 200 people through social media after Hurricane Ida struck the region in 2021, offering to help them apply for FEMA disaster assistance. Between October 2021 and March 2023 she built fraudulent applications on their behalf using fake leases, forged landlord letters, falsified utility bills, fabricated earnings statements and bogus home-repair estimates, in exchange for half of whatever FEMA approved. FEMA paid $1,744,982.64 in disaster assistance based on those false representations. She was charged in April 2024 with one count of fraud in connection with a major disaster declaration, 24 counts of wire fraud and seven counts of mail fraud, pleaded guilty to all 32 counts in September 2025, and was sentenced on January 28, 2026 by U.S. District Judge Kelley Brisbon Hodge to 5 years in federal prison and 4 years of supervised release.
- Year
- 2026
- Where
- United States
- Outcome
- Sentenced
- Reported loss
- $1.7 million
- Victims
- Not stated in the sources
- Schemes
- FEMA disaster assistance fraud
- Last reviewed
- 2026-10-20
The facts, as recorded
- Hurricane Ida struck the Philadelphia region at Category 4 intensity in late summer 2021, killing at least five people in Pennsylvania and prompting a federal major disaster declaration covering Philadelphia, Bucks, Chester, Delaware, Montgomery and York counties.
- Jasmine Williams, 34, of Plymouth Meeting, Montgomery County, offered to help disaster survivors, and others with no genuine Ida-related loss, apply for FEMA Individual Assistance, recruiting participants through social media, including renters, homeowners and homeless individuals.
- Between October 2021 and March 2023 she built fraudulent applications herself using fake leases, forged landlord letters, falsified utility bills, fabricated earnings statements and bogus home-repair estimates, and solicited photos of storm damage online to support the claims.
- In exchange for her services, Williams demanded half of whatever FEMA approved for each application, and used intimidation, including posting a participant's personal information, to collect payment.
- FEMA paid $1,744,982.64 in disaster assistance based on the false representations made across the scheme.
- Williams was charged in April 2024 with one count of fraud in connection with a major disaster declaration, 24 counts of wire fraud and seven counts of mail fraud, 32 counts in total, and pleaded guilty to all of them in September 2025.
- U.S. District Judge Kelley Brisbon Hodge sentenced her on January 28, 2026 to 5 years in federal prison and 4 years of supervised release.
- The case was investigated by the Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General, with assistance from FEMA Fraud Prevention and Investigations, and prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorneys Ruth Mandelbaum and S. Chandler Harris of the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.
Why this case matters
This is the largest documented FEMA Individual Assistance fraud on this page by dollar amount, and the only one built on a recruitment model rather than a single applicant lying about their own residence. Williams did not need genuine Hurricane Ida survivors; she needed people willing to put their name and bank account on an application she built herself, in exchange for a cut. That structure, paying participants for their identity rather than inventing one herself every time, is what let a single scheme reach $1.74 million.
What the paperwork looked like
According to the charges Williams pleaded guilty to, each fraudulent application relied on the same small set of fabricated documents: a fake lease, a forged landlord letter, a falsified utility bill, a fabricated earnings statement, and a bogus home-repair estimate. She also solicited photos of storm damage online to round out a file that otherwise had no real claim behind it, then demanded half of whatever FEMA approved as her fee.
Collecting the fee
Williams’s method for collecting her cut reportedly went beyond simply asking for it: prosecutors say she used intimidation, including posting a participant’s personal information, against people who did not pay what she demanded once FEMA approved their application. This separates her operation from a one-time, victimless-seeming paperwork service; participants who tried to walk away faced pressure to pay regardless.
The caveat
Williams pleaded guilty to all 32 counts and has been sentenced; this page does not treat any of the underlying conduct as an unproven allegation. The $1,744,982.64 figure is the court’s own loss calculation for the period October 2021 to March 2023; earlier reporting at the charging stage cited an approximate $1.5 million figure, which reflected an earlier, less complete accounting before the final total was determined. This page does not independently verify FEMA’s underlying payment records beyond what the cited reporting states.
People named in the public record
- Jasmine Williams · convicted
Sources
- FEMA Fraud Ringleader Gets Five Years for $1.7M Hurricane Ida Scam. MyChesCo. Accessed 2026-10-20. Supports: Williams's age and location, Hurricane Ida's disaster declaration, the social-media recruitment of nearly 200 people, the fabricated documents and solicited damage photos, the half-of-payout fee and intimidation, the $1,744,982.64 FEMA loss figure between October 2021 and March 2023, the April 2024 charges and count breakdown, the September 2025 guilty plea, the January 28, 2026 sentencing before Judge Kelley Brisbon Hodge, the 5-year sentence and 4-year supervised release, and the investigating and prosecuting parties.