Inside job: State, federal workers bilked millions in pandemic relief money

In hindsight, it seems stunning that Massachusetts would have taken a chance on hiring Tiffany Pacheco in the first place.

Two months before her April 2020 hiring she’d walked out of a federal prison after serving time for aggravated identity theft and passing bad checks.

Undeterred by that history, Massachusetts hired her for its Department of Unemployment Assistance — where she was put to work processing pandemic unemployment claims, with access to residents’ information.

Pacheco would go on to steal some of those identities and file bogus pandemic unemployment claims in their names, as well as file false claims under her own name and that of her husband, Arthur. All told, she took the government for nearly $200,000 in actual losses, according to court documents associated with her guilty plea.