a A wild story of stolen identities The case was discovered last year after a DNA test revealed that a man had been secretly living under the name of an old colleague he met 35 years ago.
This story begins in 1988 in Albuquerque, New Mexico. matthew david keiranswas a young man in his early twenties who had run away from his adoptive parents as a teenager. He met William Donald Woods, a young man from Kentucky, and they began working together at a local hot dog stand.
It’s unclear how long the two worked together or the extent of their relationship, but somehow Keirans obtained Woods’ social security number and later that year, he stopped using his real name altogether and began living as Woods. She then obtained documents in Woods’ name, including a driver’s license and a Social Security card that had Woods’ actual Social Security number on it. At one point, he even managed to receive a copy of Woods’ official birth certificate from the state of Kentucky after searching for Woods’ family history through Ancestry.com.
In 1994, Keilans married a woman using the name Woods. The couple eventually had a child, whose last name appears to have remained Woods to this day.
As the years passed, Keirans secured a well-paying job in the IT department at the University of Iowa Hospitals, and the nature of the job allowed him to work remotely from his home in eastern Wisconsin. From 2013 until his 2023, he made more than $700,000 in that position, and at his peak was making more than $140,000 annually.
With a steady income and a seemingly normal Midwest life, Keiran opened multiple credit cards and bank accounts and took out several loans to make major purchases, including at least three Jeeps. did. By 2022, he had taken out more than $200,000 in loans from various credit unions in Iowa and more than $100,000 in loans from National Bank.
The real William Woods, on the other hand, wasn’t so lucky. He was living on the streets of Los Angeles when he learned in 2019 that $130,000 had been loaned to his name. He then went to a local branch and asked for the account to be closed, claiming that he did not want to repay the fraudulent loan. He provided the banker with a real Social Security card and California ID that matched the information in his bank records.
However, since the account was opened by Keiran, Woods was understandably unable to answer the account’s security questions. The bank then contacted the Los Angeles Police Department. When detectives contacted them, Kierans faxed them documents that they thought would prove he was Woods — except for one problem. His Wisconsin driver’s license listed his middle name as David (his real middle name), but Woods’ middle name was Donald. However, Kierans managed to convince detectives that he sometimes used his middle name, David.
In October 2019, Woods was arrested and charged with two felonies related to identity theft. Court documents in the case claimed that Woods’ real name was misspelled as Matthew Kaylans, but Woods never wavered about his true identity.
By February 2020, after Woods languished in prison for four months, a judge ruled that Woods was not mentally fit to stand trial. In October of the same year, Woods was taken to a psychiatric hospital and given psychotropic drugs.
On March 17, 2021, Woods pleaded no contest to two felonies and was sentenced to prison. In total, he spent 428 days in prison and 147 days in a psychiatric hospital.
After his release, a judge ordered Woods to use his real name, Kaylans, from now on. Woods did not comply. He immediately began contacting news agencies and law enforcement, desperately trying to prove that he was the William Donald Woods he always said he was.
Through his investigation, Woods learned that Kierans worked at a hospital in Iowa and contacted a member of the hospital’s security team to file a complaint. Peace officials turned the complaint over to local detectives, who took Woods’ accusations seriously. He also managed to locate Woods’ father in Kentucky and persuaded the old man to provide a DNA sample.
DNA testing then conclusively proved that Woods was the old man’s biological son and that the Kaylans were frauds who had lied. But before the detective twists his hand, he first has a little fun with Keiran and the others. In an interview last July, he asked Mr Keirans his father’s first name. Instead of giving the Kentucky man’s name, Keirans accidentally gave the name of his real adoptive father.
When detectives confronted Keilans with the DNA evidence, Keilans realized there was trouble. “My life is over,” he reportedly admitted. court documents. “Everything is gone.” He was right. He was arrested on July 18th and lost his hospital advantage soon after.
Keirans, now 58, was arrested and charged at the local level before federal authorities intervened and put the hammer down. He was indicted on seven federal charges in December and pleaded guilty to two of them on Monday: one count of making false statements to a National Credit Union Administration insurance agency and one count of aggravated identity theft. He currently faces more than 30 years in prison. His sentencing hearing has not yet been scheduled and he remains in U.S. Marshals custody.
Woods’ current whereabouts have not been reported.
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