COLUMBUS, Ohio — A man from Columbus has been sentenced to three years in prison and must repay nearly half-a-million dollars in unclaimed funds that he stole from the state, according to U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Ohio Kenneth Parker.
Marcus C. Beatty, 55, reportedly stole $486,408.55 in unclaimed funds from the State of Ohio, who was holding the funds in trust for the owners to claim.
According to Parker’s office, court documents outline a fraud scheme Beatty ran from approximately June 2011 through March 2018 to steal from the Ohio Department of Commerce Division of Unclaimed Funds.
Last month, 10TV’s Brittany Bailey covered unclaimed funds in the state and found that there is more than $3 billion sitting in trust. Those funds come from lost or forgotten money from inactive checking or savings accounts, refunds or credit balances, uncashed cashier’s check, stocks and bonds, forgotten utility deposits or last paychecks.
Beatty repeatedly filed fraudulent claims for unclaimed funds for almost eight years by identifying Ohio businesses whose registrations had been cancelled, using fraudulent paperwork to reinstate the businesses with the Ohio Secretary of State, changing the names of these companies to the names of companies who have unclaimed funds, then filing then fraudulent claims to obtain the funds.
Beatty used this process for five different Ohio companies. He also did this with agencies in Alabama, Nebraska, New Jersey and Pennsylvania.
According to a release, Beatty pleaded guilty to one count of mail fraud in 2022 and prior to that, he was sentenced to 33 months in prison in 2006 for a separate fraud scheme.
