Mississippi Woman Pleads Guilty in Oil Spill Fraud Case
A 29-year-old Gulfport, Miss., woman has accepted a plea agreement for her role in a family scheme to get oil spill recovery money with fraudulent claims of lost wages.
The Sun Herald reports Sonya Renee Williams pleaded guilty in federal court Monday on a charge involving a $21,000 check from the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill Trust Fund.
She is free on bond pending sentencing Oct. 1. She faces up to 20 years in prison.
Williams is the sixth relative to plead guilty in a family scheme to file claims for lost wages by using paperwork from a bogus business.
Her husband, Stephen D. Williams, pleaded guilty June 27 to mail fraud involving two checks that totaled over $60,000. His sentencing is set for Sept. 13.
Copyright 2026 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Popular Today
- Tesla Drops ‘Self-Driving’ Branding to Appease Europe Regulators
- Will California’s New Smoke Claims Law Create a Recovery Bottleneck?
- TikTok Accused by NY of Running Secret Safety Tests on Teens
- Business Interruption Claims Are Approaching $1M Average
Popular This Month
- Apollo’s Rowan Blasts Regulators for Handling of Walter Insurers
- New Corgi, Liberate, VERVE Claims Tech. Do We Need New Acronyms?
- The Nation’s Insurance Laboratory: What Liability Trends in California Mean for the Rest of the Country
- Londoners Find ‘Horrendous’ Cracks in Their Homes After Successive Heat Waves