Wisconsin man who was former hospital administrator pleads guilty in identity theft scheme that spanned three decades

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Matthew David Keirans, age 58, from Hartland, Wis. was convicted of one count of false statement to a national credit union administration insured institution and one count of aggravated identity theft, according to court documents obtained by the Wisconsin Law Journal.

Keirans was a former Iowa hospital administrator who lived under a false identity for more than 30 years and caused the false imprisonment of his victim.

He pled guilty April 1 in federal court in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

According to the Justice Department, evidence presented at hearings in the case established that Keirans and his identity theft victim worked together at a hotdog cart in Albuquerque, New Mexico, in the late 1980s. Keirans assumed the victim’s identity and, for the next three decades, used that identity in every aspect of his life. Keirans obtained several false documents in the victim’s name, including a Kentucky birth certificate.

In 2013, Keirans obtained employment as a high-level administrator in an Iowa City hospital. Keirans provided the hospital with false identification documents during the hiring process, including a fictitious I-9 form, social security number, date of birth, and other identification documents in his victim’s name. After getting hired, Keirans worked for the hospital remotely from his residence in Wisconsin. Keirans’ access to, and roles in, the system architecture of the hospital’s computer infrastructure were “the highest it could be,” and Keirans “was the key administrator of critical systems.”

Between August 2016 and May 2022, Keirans repeatedly obtained vehicle and personal loans from two credit unions in the Northern District of Iowa using the victim’s name, social security number, and date of birth. Keirans obtained eight loans with a total value of over $200,000 from the credit unions.

Keirans also maintained deposits at a national bank. In 2019, the victim, who was homeless at the time, entered the branch of the national bank in Los Angeles, California, and told a branch manager that he had recently discovered that someone was using his credit and had accumulated large amounts of debt. The victim stated that he did not want to pay the debt and wished to close his accounts at the bank. The victim presented the bank with his true social security card, as well as an authentic State of California identification card. Due to the large amount of currency in the accounts, the branch manager asked the victim a series of security questions, which the victim was unable to answer. The national bank then called the Los Angeles Police Department (“LAPD”).

LAPD officers spoke with Keirans on the telephone, who stated he lived in Wisconsin and did not give anyone in California permission to access his bank accounts. After faxing the LAPD a series of phony identification documents, the LAPD arrested Keirans’ victim on two felony charges. The victim was charged in Keirans’ name and held without bail at the Los Angeles County Jail.

In the ensuing months, Keirans contacted the LAPD and Los Angeles District Attorney (LADA) numerous times requesting updates on the victim’s prosecution. Meanwhile, Keirans’ victim continued to assert throughout the California criminal proceedings that he was not Keirans. A California state court judge ultimately found Keirans’ victim was not mentally competent to stand trial and ordered Keirans’ victim to a California mental hospital. The California state court also ordered Keirans’ victim to receive psychotropic medication.

In March 2021, Keirans’ victim pled “no contest” to the two felony charges in exchange for a “time-served” sentence and immediate release from custody. In total, Keirans’ victim spent 428 days in county jail and 147 days in the mental hospital as a result of Keirans’ false reports to the LAPD and LADA. The state court also ordered Keirans’ victim to “use only their true name, Matthew Keirans” in the future, according to officials.

After his release from jail and hospital, Keirans’ victim made numerous attempts to regain his identity. For his part, Keirans continued to make false reports and statements to law enforcement officials in Wisconsin and California, authorities noted.

In January 2023, after learning where Keirans was employed, the victim contacted the Iowa City hospital’s security department about Keirans. The hospital referred Keirans’ complaint to a local law enforcement agency, which assigned an experienced detective to investigate the victim’s complaint. The detective conducted an investigation and, over the course of the ensuing months, unraveled Keirans’ identity theft scheme. Among other things, the detective obtained DNA evidence that conclusively proved that Keirans was not the son of an elderly man in Kentucky, as Keirans had claimed, but that Keirans’ victim was the man’s son.

During an interview with the detective in July 2023, Keirans initially insisted that the victim was “crazy” and “needed help and should be locked up.” When the detective presented Keirans with the results of the DNA testing, however, Keirans confessed to the three-decade identity theft scheme. Keirans also admitted to providing fraudulent documents to authorities in Los Angeles from his residence in Wisconsin to aid in the arrest, prosecution, and incarceration of the victim.

Sentencing before United States District Court Chief Judge C.J. Williams will be set after a presentence report is prepared. Keirans remains in custody of the United States Marshal pending sentencing. Keirans faces a mandatory minimum sentence of 2 years’ imprisonment and a possible maximum sentence of 32 years’ imprisonment, a $1.25 million fine, and five years of supervised release following any imprisonment.

The case is being prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorney Timothy L. Vavricek and was investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the University of Iowa Police Department.