Star Tribune
Maplewood woman given 1½-year prison term for stealing $1.25M in government COVID-19 relief money
A Maplewood woman has been sentenced to 1½ years in prison for stealing for herself and others $1.25 million in COVID-19 relief money from government agencies.
The sentencing Wednesday of Takara Hughes, 36, in U.S. District Court in Minneapolis came after she pleaded guilty to wire fraud for submitting phony claims for unemployment benefits to state agencies in Minnesota and elsewhere.
Along with her prison time, Hughes’ sentence includes three years of supervision after her release and an order to pay back everything she stole from agencies that included the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development and California Employment Development Department.
Ahead of sentencing, Hughes’ defense argued for her to receive a prison term of a year and a day, pointing out that both of her parents’ lives of crime made her childhood especially difficult.
But prosecutors pushed for 2¾ years in prison, noting in a filing with the court that she “lied and defrauded repeatedly and audaciously” as part of her scheme.
In January 2022, federal agents searched her home and found “substantial evidence of her scheme, including on her devices and her cell phone,” the filing continued.
One text on her phone included in the prosecution filing referenced submitting false claim applications and included the message, “It’s so easy. I can walk him thru.”
The attorney for a co-defendant, 39-year-old Tequisha Solomon, of Las Vegas, has pleaded guilty to wire fraud.
Federal sentencing guidelines call for Solomon, whose thefts were nearly four times what Hughes stole, to serve anywhere from seven to 8¾ years in prison. However, federal judges have full discretion when sentencing defendants and are not bound by the guidelines calculation. Her sentencing has yet to be scheduled.
For example, according to prosecutors:
While Solomon and Hughes lived in Nevada or Minnesota, they falsely claimed they resided in Southern California, where they worked as hairstylists, and received at least $37,000 and $46,000, respectively, in state unemployment benefits.
Hughes and Solomon, who has lived in South St. Paul and Woodbury, also fraudulently applied for economic injury disaster and federal Paycheck Protection Program small-business loans by falsely claiming they owned cleaning service businesses. They also submitted fraudulent claims on behalf of other people and charged them a fee to do so.
Solomon reportedly cost the federal government and several state agencies at least $4.7 million for alleged false claims. Hughes reportedly was paid $1.25 million for herself and others.
Star Tribune
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, on the campaign trial, gives a pep talk to the Mankato West High School Scarlets, a team he once coached.
MANKATO – The football players in their pads jogged out to face their rivals Friday night as Gov. Tim Walz, back home briefly as he campaigns across the country as vice presidential nominee, cheered them on.
“Don’t forget to have fun, enjoy,” Walz told players on the football team at Mankato West High School, where he worked as a geography teacher and assistant football coach before launching a political career that carried him to the Democratic Party’s national ticket.
Since choosing Walz as her running mate, Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris has touted his background as a football coach, hunter and gun owner, as Democrats reach out to Midwestern voters and look for inroads with men.
Walz’s stop in Mankato is one of a series of media stops in the battleground states of Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, where the governor is talking high school football and hunting.
“This is the best of America,” Walz told reporters after greeting the players of Mankato West ahead of their rivalry game with Mankato East. He said he would visit his old classroom, before heading to watch the game.
A quarter center ago, Walz was the assistant defensive football coach for the 1999 Mankato West football team that won the state championship. That year’s crosstown rivalry game was a spark for Mankato West as it headed toward its state championship, said John Considine, a Mankato West alum and right tackle on that 1999 Class 4A championship team.
“It’s good to have him back,” Considine said Friday.
Local Republicans called Walz’s appearance a stunt. “They’re getting desperate to get the word out,” said Yvonne Simon, chair of the Blue Earth County GOP, adding she’s doesn’t think the governor’s “coach” branding is catching on.
“There’s a fair amount of stuff we’ve digested over the years,” Kerfoot told the Star Tribune at the time of the sale. “It’ll take a while to pick all of it out of me.”
In recent years, he and Sue have spent summers in Minnesota and then traveled back to Missouri to be close to family for the rest of the year.
Visitors love to drop in and talk about Justine Kerfoot or Bruce Kerfoot or the years they spent working at the lodge, Fredrikson said. He’s found that Bruce’s energy seemingly matched that of his mother, who died in 2001 when she was 94.
“He was one of those people that was able to get stuff done more easily or better than other people,” Fredrikson said. “Maybe because of who he was, or maybe because the stars align for this kind of person.”
In a social media post, Kerfoot’s family said they had peace knowing he and his mother “were paddling together to their shore lunch spot.”
Mark Hennessy knew Kerfoot for 40 years, but has had a closer view for the past three years. He said without Kerfoot, the Chik-Wauk Museum and Nature Center, located near the end of the Gunflint Trail, wouldn’t exist. Whenever there was a work project, the executive director said, Kerfoot would show up.
A teenage motorcyclist was killed in a collision with an SUV at a Burnsville intersection, officials said Friday.
The crash occurred shortly after 7:30 p.m. Thursday at Burnsville Parkway and Interstate 35W, police said.
The motorcyclist was identified by the Hennepin County Medical Examiner’s Office as Peter Vsevolod Genis, 17, of Burnsville.
An SUV driver was turning left from westbound Burnsville Parkway to northbound 35W when Genis went through a red light while heading east and struck the SUV.
The SUV driver and a woman with him, both from Burnsville, were not hurt.
The other vehicle was a Mercedes SUV. The driver was a 30-year-old male from Burnsville, with a 29-year-old female passenger from Burnsville. Neither of them was injured.
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