All Time Bad Beat: Man Has Identity Stolen, Ends Up in Mental Hospital Because Nobody Believes He's Actually Him
The Gazette - A former University of Iowa Hospital employee pleaded guilty Monday to federal charges that he had been living under another man’s identity since 1988, causing the other man to be falsely imprisoned for identity theft and sent to a mental hospital.
Matthew David Keirans, 58, was convicted of one count of false statement to a National Credit Union Administration insured institution — punishable by up to 30 years in federal prison — and one count of aggravated identity theft — punishable by up to two years in federal prison.
Keirans worked at the hospital under the name William Donald Woods, an alias he had been using since about 1988, when he worked with the real William Woods at a hot dog cart in Albuquerque, N.M.
The phrase "wild story" is thrown around all willy nilly here at Barstool Sports. So are the words preposterous, electric, and Deion Sanders.
"The Wild Story Behind About Deion Sanders Preposterously Electric Post-Game Press Conference", and blog titles of that nature. But I'm giving this story of the man who had his identity stolen and ended up in a mental hospital because nobody believed he was actually him The Official John Rich Wild Story Stamp Of Approval.
Not only is this story wild, but it's also long. However, I will do my very best to regurgitate it in the most efficient way possible. This certainly won't be a creative piece of writing, but I had to get this story there on the blog.
STORY: Matthew Keirans worked with a gentleman named William Woods at a hot dog cart in Albuquerque, NM. You gotta have your head on a swivel when you're employed by a hot dog cart. Hot dog cart employees are notoriously shady characters. I don't have any info to back that up but I'm pretty sure I'm right. You don't work for a hot dog cart past if things are going well in your life. I'd imagine most hot dog cart employees would go to drastic measures to get out of the hot dog business. William Woods learned this the hard way.
Somehow (the article doesn't specify how exactly), Keirans obtained all of William Woods' personal information. This Keiran guy seems to have had a bit of a shady past. An arrest warrant was issued for him at the age of 16 after stealing his parents car. So it's apparent that Keiran's was running from something, so he decided to assume Williams Woods' identity. Keiran lived the better part of his life under the name Williams Woods.
In 1994 — six years after he started using Woods’ name — Keirans got married. He had a child, whose last name is Woods.
In 2012 — 24 years after he started using Woods’ name — Keirans fraudulently acquired a copy of Woods’ birth certificate from the state of Kentucky using information he found about Woods’ family on Ancestry.com.
By 2013, Keirans had moved to eastern Wisconsin. He started his IT job with UI Hospitals and worked remotely. He earned more than $700,000 in his 10 years working for the hospital. In 2023, his salary was $140,501, according to the hospital.
Keirans obtained multiple vehicle and personal loans from Iowa credit unions under Woods’ name between 2016 and 2022, totaling more than $200,000. He also had money stored in a national bank under Woods’ name, court documents state.
You might be wondering how the hell Keirans could get away with this for so long, considering the real William Woods was also out there in the world living under the same identity. Kieran was paying taxes under Woods name and everything. You'd think sometime between 1988 and 2019, something would have been flagged, and someone would have realized that there were 2 William Woods out there. However, the real William Woods was homeless in Los Angeles. As a homeless man, I'm assuming Woods lived a very off the books life, which allowed Keirans to get away with the theft for so long
Note: In a different scenario, it wouldn't be the worst idea for a homeless man to sell his identity to someone. I don't know if that's something that is already done. But if you're just living on a street corner, and you have nothing to your name, I'd imagine there's people who would pay you BIG money for all your personal information so they could ditch their own life an take over yours. Something to think about if you're homeless.
Fast forward to 2019. The real William Woods, after two decades, finally realizes that someone was using his credit and had racked up some serious debt. Good job William. Nothing gets by you. He did his best to rectify the situation. He took his real society security card, and a legitimate California I.D. to the bank so he could close his accounts. The bank still didn't believe him. So they decided to get in touch with Keirans, as his phone number was attached to William Woods a' bank account.
The bank employee called Keirans, whose the phone number was connected to the accounts. He answered the security questions correctly and said no one in California should have access to the accounts.
The employee called the Los Angeles Police Department, and officers spoke with Woods and Keirans. Keirans faxed the Los Angeles officers a copy of Woods’ Social Security card and birth certificate, as well as a Wisconsin driver’s license Keirans had acquired under Woods’ name.
The driver’s license had the name William David Woods — David is Keirans’ real middle name — rather than William Donald Woods. When questioned, Keiran told an LAPD officer he sometimes used David as a middle name, but his real name was William Donald Woods.
Keiran's had fully taken over the account. Fully taken over his life. Keirans was more William Woods than the real William Woods. That's when the police get involved. And after reviewing the facts, they came to the conclusion that William Woods was actually NOT William Woods.
The real Woods was arrested and charged with identity theft and false impersonation, under a misspelling of Keirans’ name: Matthew Kierans.
Because Woods continued to insist, throughout the judicial process, that he was William Woods and not Matthew Kierans, a judge ruled in February 2020 that he was not mentally competent to stand trial and he was sent to a mental hospital in California, where he received psychotropic medication and other mental health treatment.
In March 2021, Woods pleaded no contest to the identity theft charges — meaning he accepted the conviction but did not admit guilt. He was sentenced to two years imprisonment with credit for the two years he already served in the county jail and the hospital and was released. He was also ordered to pay $400 in fines and to stop using the name William Woods.
I mean what the fuck. I told you this was the bad beat of a lifetime. I can't imagine how insanely helpless you must feel when the world is telling you that you're not actually yourself. You argue it tooth and nail to the point that the government determines you are mentally unwell just for thinking you're actually yourself. To be sitting in a fucking mental hospital, where they're forcing psychiatric drugs down your throat until they've fucked up your brain enough that you stop fighting back. That'd be enough to make me kill myself. I honestly think I would kill myself. I don't exist anymore so who the fuck cares, right?
But William Woods had more heart than that. He kept fighting. He got to the bottom of who the hell had stolen his life. He managed to find out where Keirens lived, where he was employed, and contacted the local police. Turns out Keirans was working security under the name Williams Woods, at the University of Iowa's Hospital.
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The University of Iowa's Police Department opened an investigation. Which I imagine was the case of a lifetime for them. Campus police are primarily employed to make universities money by dishing out as many underage's and public intoxications as humanly possible. Rarely does a case like this come across their desk. Shoutout to Detective Ian Mallory, who took Woods seriously and managed to get Keirans to slip up.
University of Iowa Police Detective Ian Mallory opened an investigation into the case. Mallory found the biological father listed on Woods’ birth certificate — which both Woods and Keirans had sent him an official copy of — and tested the father’s DNA against Woods’ DNA. The test proved Woods was the man’s son.
On July 17, 2023, Mallory interviewed Keirans. He asked Keirans what his father’s name was, and Keirans accidentally gave the name of his own adoptive father. Mallory then confronted Keirans with the DNA evidence, and Keirans responded by saying, “my life is over” and “everything is gone.” He then confessed to the prolonged identity theft, according to court documents.
After over 20 years, justice is finally being served. I feel like that qualifies as a wild story. Honestly, this probably happens more than we realize. Especially with homeless people. If someone manages to steal a homeless person's identity, obtains all of their information, then takes over their life. If the homeless person ever call him out, then you're taking the word of a homeless person vs a person with a much more clean and polished appearance. Who do you think the cops are going to believe?
It's also wild to me that they didn't do a DNA test earlier. In any situation where two people are claiming to be the same person, you should just immediately go to a DNA test. And if I'm interpreting that part of the article correctly, the real William Wood's father was just living somewhere this whole time? Nobody before this campus police detective had the thought to maybe try and track down a family member?
Either way, Keirans is facing up to 30 years. I hope the real William Woods is able to parlay this snafu into some sort of pay day. There has to be someone he can sue. The bank. The people who threw him into a mental hospital for literally just being himself. Woods is owed compensation from someone. So I guess if he is able to get paid off this, then this isn't such a bad beat after all. It's actually kind of an awesome beat. William Woods was already at rock bottom. This is possibly the best chance at a new life he's ever going to get. I hope he gets his money too. Fuck this Keirans fellow. Shame on him for betraying the trust of a brother in the hot dog cart business.