A Washington state inmate pulled off a disgusting and deeply personal con against some of this nation’s most vulnerable heroes, using nothing more than a jail phone and a twisted sense of deceit.
Federal prosecutors say Darryl Lamont Young, 41, ran an elaborate scam from inside King County Jail, making dozens of calls to VA medical centers across the country, pretending to be a legitimate employee. His goal wasn’t patriotism or penance—it was exploitation.
Authorities confirmed that Young used these calls to trick VA staff into revealing the identities and personal details of seriously ill veterans under care, veterans who sacrificed for the flag while this con artist preyed on their suffering.
Once Young obtained the family contact information of the ailing veterans, he and his accomplice, Aqeelah Ngiesha Williams, 29, moved in for the kill. They called relatives pretending to be VA officials offering COVID-era relief payments. What they really wanted were bank details—and what they took was money meant for food, medicine, and dignity.
According to the Justice Department, Young executed this despicable plan more than 60 times between late 2021 and early 2023, ultimately stealing about $8,900. His four-day trial ended with a conviction on 14 counts of aggravated identity theft and wire fraud. Williams was found guilty on 12 similar counts.
“While they did not get a huge amount of money with this scheme, the harm they caused to those already suffering a health crisis is deserving of federal prosecution,” said U.S. Attorney Gorman in a Department of Justice statement. That’s putting it mildly.
This wasn’t some high-tech cybercrime operation. It was old-fashioned scamming, but with a twist of cold-hearted precision. Jail calls in King County are free, and the local VA medical center didn’t receive any notification that the incoming caller was an inmate. That loophole handed Young the anonymity he needed to pose as “Jason in bed control” or “Travis” in “patient registration” at the VA.
Posing as a fellow employee, Young convinced VA staff to transfer him to out-of-state hospitals, where he continued his impersonations. Those hospitals, unaware of the jail origin of the call, treated him as one of their own and complied with his requests.
As the Justice Department pointed out, Young had served in the military himself, giving him valuable insight into VA protocols and operations. This knowledge made the ruse tragically effective.
After obtaining personal details, Williams helped facilitate follow-up calls to the veterans’ family members. Together they would play the parts convincingly, promising a COVID-related “relief payment” for the sick veteran and asking for financial details to process it. Once the information was secured, they siphoned off the funds, conveniently depositing the stolen cash straight into Young’s commissary account.
What’s most infuriating is how easily bureaucratic negligence allowed an inmate to call federal medical institutions without alerting staff to the source of the call. For a government known for its surveillance excesses, it somehow failed to monitor its own sanctioned phone systems effectively.
It’s not simply the theft of dollars that disgusts—it’s the betrayal. Every veteran deserves trust, respect, and the assurance that the systems designed to care for them aren’t being weaponized by criminals hiding behind an orange jumpsuit.
Federal prosecutors got their convictions. But the underlying scandal is that it took more than a year and over 60 successful cons before the system caught up. That’s not vigilance, it’s complacency.
One can’t help but wonder what Secretary of War Pete Hegseth—himself a fierce advocate for accountability inside veterans’ systems—thinks of these embarrassing operational failures. If Washington wants to stop scams like this, it should start by cutting through layers of red tape and demanding real accountability across the War Department’s cooperative agencies.
The betrayal of America’s sick and wounded warriors is the lowest of the low, but this case shows what’s possible when unchecked access meets government incompetence. It should serve as a wake-up call that vigilance is not optional; it’s a duty.
As Young awaits his final sentencing, veterans and their families are left asking the same question they’ve been asking for years: who’s really watching the guardians?
