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 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.”