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An Iowa hospital administrator who lived under a false identity for more than 30 years and caused the false imprisonment, involuntary hospitalization, and forced medication of his victim was sentenced today to 12 years in federal prison.

Matthew David Keirans, age 59, from Hartland, Wisconsin, received the prison term after an April 1, 2024, guilty plea to one count of false statement to a national credit union administration insured institution and one count of aggravated identity theft.

Evidence presented at hearings in the case established that Keirans and his identity theft victim worked together at a hotdog cart in Albuquerque, New Mexico, in the late 1980s.  Keirans assumed the victim’s identity and, for the next three decades, used that identity in every aspect of his life.  Keirans obtained several false documents in the victim’s name, including a Kentucky birth certificate.

In 2013, Keirans obtained employment as a high-level administrator in an Iowa City hospital.  Keirans provided the hospital with false identification documents during the hiring process, including a fictitious I-9 form, social security number, date of birth, and other identification documents in his victim’s name.  After getting hired, Keirans worked for the hospital remotely from his residence in Wisconsin.  Keirans’ access to, and roles in, the system architecture of the hospital’s computer infrastructure were “the highest it could be,” and Keirans “was the key administrator of critical systems.”

Between March 2014 and May 2022, Keirans repeatedly obtained vehicle and personal loans from two credit unions in the Northern District of Iowa using the victim’s name, social security number, and date of birth.  Keirans obtained nine loans with a total value of over $250,000 from the credit unions.  Keirans also obtained various lines of credit from other lenders in the victim’s name and with his personal identifiers.

Keirans also maintained deposits at a national bank in the victim’s name.  In August 2019, the victim, who was homeless at the time, entered the branch of the national bank in Los Angeles, California, and told a branch manager that he had recently discovered that someone was using his credit and had accumulated large amounts of debt.  The victim stated that he did not want to pay the debt and wished to close his accounts at the bank.  The victim presented the bank with his true social security card, as well as an authentic State of California identification card.  Due to the large amount of currency in the accounts, the branch manager asked the victim a series of security questions, which the victim was unable to answer.  The national bank then called the Los Angeles Police Department (“LAPD”).

LAPD officers spoke with Keirans on the telephone, who stated he lived in Wisconsin and did not give anyone in California permission to access his bank accounts.  After faxing the LAPD a series of phony identification documents, the LAPD arrested Keirans’ victim on two felony charges.  After Keirans requested his victim’s prosecution, the victim was charged in Keirans’ name and held without bail at the Los Angeles County Jail.

In the ensuing months, Keirans contacted the LAPD and Los Angeles District Attorney (LADA) numerous times requesting updates on the victim’s prosecution.  Meanwhile, Keirans’ victim continued to assert throughout the California criminal proceedings that he was not Keirans.  A California state court judge ultimately found Keirans’ victim was not mentally competent to stand trial and ordered Keirans’ victim to a California mental hospital.  The California state court also ordered Keirans’ victim to receive psychotropic medication. 

In March 2021, Keirans’ victim pled “no contest” to the two felony charges in exchange for a “time-served” sentence, a $400 fine, and immediate release from custody.  In total, Keirans’ victim spent 428 days in county jail and 147 days in the mental hospital as a result of Keirans’ false reports to the LAPD and LADA.  The state court also ordered Keirans’ victim to “use only their true name, Matthew Keirans” in the future.

After his release from jail and hospital, Keirans’ victim made numerous attempts to regain his identity.  For his part, Keirans continued to make false reports and statements to law enforcement officials in Wisconsin and California.  The State of California billed the victim over $118,000 for the costs of his “care” in the mental hospital between October 20, 2021, and March 15, 2021.

In January 2023, after learning where Keirans was employed, the victim contacted the Iowa City hospital’s security department about Keirans.  The hospital referred Keirans’ complaint to a local law enforcement agency, which assigned an experienced detective, Ian Mallory, to investigate the victim’s complaint.  The detective conducted an investigation and, over the course of the ensuing months, unraveled Keirans’ identity theft scheme.  Among other things, the detective obtained DNA evidence that conclusively proved that Keirans was not the son of an elderly man in Kentucky, as Keirans had claimed, but that Keirans’ victim was the man’s son. 

During an interview with the detective in July 2023, Keirans initially insisted that the victim was “crazy” and “needed help and should be locked up.”  After the detective presented Keirans with the results of the DNA testing, however, Keirans confessed to the three-decade identity theft scheme.  Keirans also admitted to providing fraudulent documents to authorities in Los Angeles from his residence in Wisconsin to aid in the arrest, prosecution, and incarceration of the victim.  A California court ultimately exonerated the victim after Keirans pled guilty in federal court.

Keirans was sentenced in Cedar Rapids by United States District Court Chief Judge C.J. Williams.  Keirans was sentenced to 144 months’ imprisonment and fined $10,000.  He was ordered to make $6,191 in restitution the victim and ordered to repay $10,000 in court-appointed attorney fees.  Keirans must also serve a five-year term of supervised release after the prison term.  There is no parole in the federal system.

At the sentencing hearing, Chief Judge Williams said Keirans’ crime was “egregious,” “callous,” and “Kafkaesque.”  Chief Judge Williams stated Keirans “weaponized the criminal justice system to achieve his goals.”  Chief Judge Williams praised the “remarkable and exceptional work” of the Iowa detective.

“Matthew Keirans spent decades pretending to be someone he was not, all the while knowing that his victim was suffering,” said United States Attorney Timothy T. Duax.  “Keirans used his victim’s identity to live his life, obtain loans, and lines of credit.  When the victim tried to clear his name of Keirans’ debts, Keirans deliberately and calculatedly lied to police officers and prosecutors in California in order to keep his victim locked up, unable to live his life, and to keep his own secret safe.  Today, Keirans has been held responsible for his actions and will spend years in prison.” 

“I would like to thank Detective Mallory for his tenacious work on this case,” said University of Iowa Police Chief Lucy Wiederholt.  “His persistence in finding the facts highlights our commitment to helping victims of crime.”

“The FBI is committed to working with our local law enforcement partners wherever we can to protect the American people and uphold the Constitution,” said Eugene Kowel, FBI Omaha Special Agent in Charge. “The FBI commends the University of Iowa Police Department’s tenacity in bringing Keirans’ fraudulent crimes to an end, and we remain dedicated to holding individuals like Keirans accountable when they break the laws of our country and impose harm on victims.”

Keirans is being held in the United States Marshal’s custody until he can be transported to a federal prison.  

The case was prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorney Timothy L. Vavricek and was investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the University of Iowa Police Department.  

Court file information at https://ecf.iand.uscourts.gov/cgi-bin/login.pl.

The case file number is 23-CR-1020.

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