‘Mastermind’ of state scam, Christy Gomez, ordered to serve 8 years, pay $83K

LAUREL, MS. – By Mark Thornton – A local investigation into an elaborate, fraudulent-check operation led to the discovery of an even deeper scam that was stealing money from state programs.

And now the ringleader of it all has to pay.

Christy Gomez, 45, of Jones County was ordered to serve eight years in the full-time custody of the Mississippi Department of Corrections and to pay more than $81,000 in restitution to the Mississippi Department of Employment Security and the Mississippi Home Corporation. She pleaded guilty in Jones County Circuit Court to four counts of organized theft/fraud enterprise for receiving proceeds from MHC’s Rental Assistance for Mississippians Program and for receiving unemployment benefits, all by fraudulent means, District Attorney Brad Thompson told the court.

“She was the mastermind behind all of it,” he said, describing what she did as “an elaborate scheme” that took the personal information of others and “portrayed herself as a landlord during COVID times” to get the RAMP benefits.

It was a case that was investigated by the State Auditor’s Office, but it all started with a bad-check complaint that Investigator Pam Smith of the Collins Police Department contacted then-Investigator J.D. Carter of the Jones County Sheriff’s Department about in January 2023. Smith was investigating claims of bad checks being passed in Collins, and Gomez told her that the checks were being printed at the home of James “Scooter” Riser on Meador Road, according to the initial report.

Carter got a search warrant for the residence, and Riser said that Gomez was making the checks in a front room, where there were computers, printer and all sorts of incriminating evidence that included 32 debit/credit cards, 18 cellphones, nine ID cards, seven Social Security cards and 15 notebooks full of people’s personal information, among other things. During the course of the investigation, Carter got the State Auditor’s Office involved after finding evidence of fraud against the state programs.

When Carter and SAO agent Layne Bounds were going to conduct followup interviews, he pulled over a vehicle that was being driven by one of the suspects in the check-cashing scheme, Desirae Milsap, who attempted to elude him before stopping, according to the report. Another suspect, James Clark, was a passenger in the car and Gomez was reportedly lying down on the backseat. Gomez and Clark were taken to the JCSD on MDOC warrants. All of the suspects admitted to having some part in the operation but also implicated each other.

Auditor Shad White of Sandersville announced the arrests of Gomez, 62-year-old Larry Hodge of Laurel and 45-year-old Michael Norman of Hattiesburg in March for their roles in the schemes to defraud the state between Jan. 1, 2020 and Dec. 31, 2022.

“Our team of investigators worked tirelessly to uncover this scheme,” White said after the guilty plea by Gomez. “We will continue to work alongside prosecutors to deliver record results for Mississippians.”

The scheme started at the South Mississippi Correctional Institution in Leakesville, Thompson told the court, adding that there were more than 17,000 pages of exhibits, “so don’t hit ‘print.’”

Gomez will also have to serve five years on post-release supervision under MDOC and to participate in the court’s community service program. The original plea agreement called for four years of supervision, but Judge Dal Williamson got Thompson and public defender Matt Sherman to agree to make it five years so her monthly payments on the restitution would be more reasonable and so she could be under the court’s control for longer in case she didn’t pay.

“I think we’re setting her up for failure,” the judge said of the four-year payment schedule. “I want to get people their money back.”

Gomez is supposed to pay $44,335.63 to the Department of Employment Security, $36,700 to the Mississippi Home Corporation, along with court fees and investigative costs, for a total of $83,390.63. She was facing up to 20 years in prison.

“It’s always a balancing act between incarceration and getting the money back,” Thompson said. “We want them to go to prison, but we want them to get out in time where they can still work and pay it back.”

More cases are pending related to the investigation. Riser has died since the investigation began. He survived a brutal beating, where he was left for dead under the bridge at Union Falls off Ovett -Moselle Road, but recovered after a months-long stay at Forrest General Hospital. He reportedly died of natural causes several months ago.

The Laurel Leader Call first published this article. The Vicksburg Daily News republish it here under a Creative Commons license.