CALIFORNIA—On June 17, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Central District of California announced that Joyce Turner, 56, was sentenced for obtaining funds intended for victims of the Eaton Fire, which raged in the Eaton Canyon of the San Gabriel Mountains in January 2025, through fraudulent means, and obtained funds intended for individuals who lost employment due to the COVID-19 outbreak through the same means.
On September 29, 2025, Turner pleaded guilty to one count of mail fraud and one count of fraud related to major disaster or emergency benefits. Her sentence requires her to pay $82,555 in restitution and serve 1 year and 9 months in federal prison.
On January 10, 2025, Turner filed an application with the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) for disaster relief assistance, in which she fraudulently claimed she had resided in a damaged rental property, located on Del Ray Avenue in Pasadena but she did not live in California. She resided in Rosharon, Texas.
FEMA provided her with over $28,195 in wildfire disaster relief funds. The funds were made possible by a presidential disaster declaration issued by former President Joe Biden. The money was intended to enable victims of the Eaton Fire, along with their family members, to cover the cost of repairing damage to their residences, as well as relocation and medical care for injuries sustained in the wildfire. Turner received at first $750 and then $6,670.00 as rental assistance after which she received $3,822 as displacement assistance along with $16,952.91 to cover repair of damages to personal property.
In August 2020, Turner submitted an application for unemployment insurance benefits, in which she falsely claimed she became employed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The California Employment Development Department agreed to provide unemployment benefits totaling $54,360. Funds were paid to her via a debit card, which was sent from Bank of America to Curson Avenue, Los Angeles, which she claimed at the time was her residence.
Her actions were investigated by the Inspector General’s Office of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, and this case was brought by the National Fraud Enforcement
Division of the U.S. Department of Justice as part of an effort to prosecute those who commit fraud.
