2 More Admit to $400K Pandemic Scheme Renting Out COVID Isolation Rooms at NYC Hotels

Two more women pleaded guilty in a $400,000 scheme to defraud a New York City program that offered free hotel rooms to help those with COVID-19 isolate, according to prosecutors.

On Wednesday, Heaven West became the fourth woman tied to the scheme to plead guilty, the city's Department of Investigation said in a release. The 22-year-old Brooklyn native pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud, a felony.

West's plea came a day after one of her co-conspirators also copped to her role in the scheme. Tatiana Benjamin, also known as Ta Banks and Lyric Muvaa, pleaded guilty to the same charge on Tuesday. Both sentencings are scheduled for May 18, 2023, when West and 28-year-old Benjamin could each face up to 20 years behind bars.

"With these guilty pleas, all four defendants are held accountable for their misuse of a City program intended to serve healthcare workers, COVID-19 patients and others impacted by the pandemic, for their personal profit," said Department of Investigation Commissioner Jocelyn Strauber.

Benjamin and West were charged in Oct. 2021, along with Tatiana Daniel and Chanette Lewis, with a scheme to defraud New York's free Hotel Room Isolation Program, which was intended to provide free hotel rooms for those isolating due to a COVID-19 infection, or or healthcare workers who needed to self-isolate due to exposure to the virus.

The criminal quartet falsely claimed to be healthcare workers, and used Facebook to advertise and sell the fraudulently obtained hotel rooms to people who were not eligible to participate in the program, according to the DOI. The women woman raked in hundreds of thousands of dollars at the height of the pandemic, selling out room from April to July of 2020.

The DOI said the women sold roughly 1,936 nights' worth of hotel rooms out to people during those few months.

The 31-year-old Lewis pleaded guilty to two felony counts of wire fraud: for the hotel scheme and a second, much longer, scheme to defraud the New York City Housing Authority. The Brooklyn woman had been accused of submitting to NYCHA fake orders of protection, district attorney letters and notes from doctors "attesting to alleged medical issues that allowed her to fraudulently obtain public housing benefits for herself and others." That scheme ran from July 2020 to October 21, the DOI said.

Daniel, 28, pleaded guilty in November.