One Man's Identity Theft Nightmare

It’s been estimated that twenty-four million people worldwide fall victim to identity theft every year. The culprits involved in these schemes take great pleasure in using someone else’s personal information to secure credit cards, apply for loans, and hack into existing accounts, among other things. Needless to say, this form of criminal malfeasance can do untold damage to the injured party, both personally and financially. The following account explores a shocking case of identity theft in which the victim was persecuted, while the perpetrator used every loophole in the system to his advantage.

This twisted tale first came to light in 2019 when Los Angeles resident William Woods attempted to apply for financial assistance, only to learn that he was hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt. What’s more, collection agencies from California to Iowa were looking for him.

After being informed that several accounts had been opened in his name at a nationally known bank, Woods had made a beeline to the nearest branch and asked to speak to someone in charge. He explained to the assistant manager that someone had stolen his identity and was using his information to procure loans, only to let them go into default. In an attempt to get the ball rolling on putting the thief out of commission, he asked that the bank accounts be closed and his name removed from their books.

The employee told Woods he would be happy to oblige, but first he would have to answer a few security questions, the answers of which would only be known to the person who opened the accounts. Since he wasn’t the one who signed the original documents, he didn’t know the answers. Even though he had provided his driver’s license and birth certificate as proof that he was indeed William Woods, the assistant manager refused to budge.

In an attempt to resolve the matter, the manager called the Iowa phone number that the man identifying himself as William Woods had used to open the accounts. When the security questions were posed to him, he had answered them without a moment’s hesitation. Indignant at the thought that a man who was teetering on homelessness was attempting to access his wealth, he had faxed copies of his ID to the bank, proving once and for all that he was in fact William Woods.

Convinced that the man seated in front of him was an imposter trying to steal funds from the true owner, the manager had called the police. Though he was on the side of right, the real William Woods was surrounded by security guards, who ordered him to stay put till officers arrived.

William Woods was taken into custody and charged with identity theft and false impersonation. He was subsequently convicted and ordered to spend the next two years behind bars. Determined to uncover the truth no matter what, he had told anyone who would listen that he was the victim of a terrible injustice. Someone was out there living his life and they needed to be stopped.

Instead of entertaining the preposterous notion, authorities had Woods committed to a mental hospital. While there, he was kept heavily medicated in order to keep him compliant.

Thousands of miles away, in Hartland, Wisconsin, Matthew David Keirans was accumulating debt faster than a jack rabbit on a date. Of course, he wasn’t doing so under his real name, but rather under the name he had been using since 1988: William Woods.

The two had known each other briefly back in the mid-1980s when they were both employed at a Los Angeles taco stand as teenagers. Keirans, who came from a troubled home, had run away at sixteen. Though not yet twenty, he had already been in trouble with the law a few times. It was simply in his nature.

At some point during, Keirans had gotten hold of Woods wallet. A plan formulating in his head even then, he had jotted down the driver’s license information. In a stroke of luck for the future conman, he had also found a folded up copy of Woods’ birth certificate. This treasure trove of information would serve him well in the years to come.

The real William Woods had no idea that any of this had taken place. He didn’t really know his rather standoffish coworker and didn’t want to. After they moved on to other things, he had never given him a second thought. The same couldn’t be said for Keirans, who was about to embark on a thirty year odyssey of deception, courtesy of the unwitting teen.

There are no records of Keirans using his real name after 1988. With the aid of a slew of forged documents, he was able to obtain a driver’s license and social security card in William Woods’ name. In 1994, he got married and later fathered a son. His wife and child shared his last name, which was of course, Woods.

In 2012, Keirans obtained a copy of William Woods’ birth certificate from the state of Kentucky. A year later, he got a job as an IT administrator at the University of Iowa Hospital. The position, which allowed him to access confidential patient records, paid well over six figures. A master at producing fraudulent documentation, he had no trouble getting a fake I-9 form, sealing the deal.

To add to Keirans’ cushy new lot in life, his coveted position was remote, meaning he could work from his home in Wisconsin. Though he was raking in money hand over fist, everything was never enough. From August 2016 through May 2022, he took out loans from at least three credit unions, totaling $200,000, all under the name William Woods. As was his habit, when payment time rolled around, he stopped answering the phone and hoped his creditors would simply go away and leave him in peace.

After spending 428 days in jail and 147 days locked away in a mental hospital, the real William Woods was released under the condition that he stop pretending to be someone he wasn’t and use his real name, which according to authorities was Matthew David ‘Kierans,’ a misspelling that no one caught at the time. He was also ordered to pay a $400 fine. In the months to come, he would be hounded relentlessly by the state of California, who insisted that he pay for the court ordered mental health treatment he received while in custody.

During the time that the real William Woods was locked up, the imposter was constantly phoning and emailing California officials, demanding to be kept in the loop. In these communications, he would routinely refer to Woods as “crazy.”

Though Woods had agreed to abandon his fight in order to gain his freedom, he had no such intentions. One of the first steps he had taken was to dispute thirty fraudulent charges that had appeared on his credit report in recent weeks. When Keirans got wind of the filings, he was livid. Taking his gripes to California authorities, he asked them to help him put a stop to the harassment, which he claimed was ruining his life.

In a move that would ultimately bring down Keirans’ carefully constructed house of cards, in January 2023, William Woods contacted the University of Iowa Hospital and told administrators all about the fraud being perpetrated on them by the man who had stolen his identity. Rather than dismissing the claims, as everyone else in authority had done up till then, the head of security had referred him to the University of Iowa Police.

A detective who knew a thing or two about identity theft was assigned to the case. After obtaining a copy of the real William Woods’ birth certificate, he had reached out to his birth father and asked if he would be willing to provide a DNA sample. When the tests came back, the results matched those of the homeless man in Los Angeles, proving once and for all that he had been telling the truth all along.

When the detective spoke with Keirans, who wasn’t aware that the case had taken an unexpected turn, he had railed against his accuser, saying he “needed help and should be locked up.”

After being informed that DNA had identified the real William Woods, Keirans had broken down, crying “my life is over.” Though he felt sorry for himself, he hadn’t expressed an ounce of sympathy for the innocent man who had spent years paying for his misdeeds in one way or another.

Keirans was arrested in Iowa on July 18, 2023 on charges of using a false birth certificate, for which he would end up spending twenty days behind bars.

The ruse finally uncovered, Keirans was ordered to turn over the tools of his trade, which included a social security card, passport, driver’s license, birth certificate, voter’s registration card, tax documents and stacks of legal papers, all bearing the name William Woods. On July 20, 2023, he was officially fired from the high level administrative position he had held at the University of Iowa Hospital for over a decade.

In April 2024, fifty-eight-year-old Matthew Keirans was convicted of making false statements to a National Credit Union Administration, and aggravated identity theft. He faces up to thirty-two years in prison in $1.25 million in fines.

Despite his despicable actions, Keirans’ family and friends have stood by him. Described as a “wonderful father” and “trustworthy” by those who knew him well, or least thought they did, he was held up as a bastion of the community. His wife Nancy speculated that he had adopted another persona in an attempt to distance himself from his abusive upbringing. The fact that the identity he had assumed already belonged to someone else hadn’t seemed to bother his supporters in the least.

William Woods, whose insistence that he was exactly who he claimed to be had fallen on deaf ears, couldn’t help but wonder if his lack of social standing had made him less believable that Keirans, whose high paying job and reputation as an upstanding citizen had been taken at face value by officials time and again. Had it not been for the Iowa detective who smelled a rat right from the start, he may very well have been forced to spend the rest of his life playing the role of Matthew David 'Kierans,' as the court demanded.

In the aftermath of the debacle, Woods’ convictions were rendered null and void. While that was all well and good, having the slate wiped clean didn’t give him back the time that was lost. A civil suit has not yet been filed on his behalf, but after what he’s been through, few would blame him for seeking restitution. If nothing else, this case acts as a reminder to keep a watchful eye over your personal information; after all, you never know how far someone may be willing to go to be you.

Resources: justice.gov, wiki.com, uiowa.edu, victims.ca.gov, nytimes.com, usnews.com