SAN FRANCISCO (KRON) — A San Francisco woman who was pretending to be a lawyer was sentenced to 18 months in federal prison.
Miranda Devlin, 37, pleaded guilty in July to charges that she defrauded people and the government, with scams dating back to 2012.
According to the plea agreement, Devlin said she stole the identities of two licensed California attorneys, and even went as far as submitting a change of address request to get one attorney’s State Bar license card mailed to her.
She admitted to representing multiple people in Bay Area courtrooms, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of California. She has never been a licensed lawyer herself.
She also defrauded the federal government’s pandemic relief program, the DA said.
She did this by filling out applications with false information to get loans through the Paycheck Protection Program and managed to get a loan of $32,700, according to the DA. She later applied for an even larger loan of $336,100 from the Small Business Administration.
“Devlin admitted that she did not pay any purported business expenses or salaries with that money but rather used it for her own personal benefit,” the press release said.
She also went by aliases Miranda M. and Miranda P.