Hospital Administrator Stole a Man's Identity: How the Fallout Led Victim to Be Sent to Psychiatric Facility

Matthew David Keirans spent more than 30 years pretending to be William Donald Woods– and the man whose identity he stole, went to jail for it

In 2019, William Donald Woods walked into a national bank in Los Angeles and said his identity had been stolen and he could not pay the large debts that had been accrued under his name.

He brought his social security card and an authentic state identification.

But, federal prosecutors in Iowa say, Woods, who was homeless at the time, could not answer a set of security questions connected to the account, and the bank called the Los Angeles Police Department.

The LAPD contacted who they believed to be the actual Woods in Wisconsin, and that man faxed them what prosecutors now say was “a series of phony identification documents,” telling them by phone that he had not authorized anyone in California to access his bank accounts.

Police arrested Woods – charging him under the name Matthew David Keirans – on two felony charges and held him without bail at the Los Angeles County Jail Aug. 20, 2019.

Throughout criminal proceedings, Woods never wavered: he was not Matthew Keirans.

A California state court ordered him to “use only their true name, Matthew Keirans,” per the order cited by Iowa prosecutors.

Referred to as “California Bill” in the criminal complaint obtained by PEOPLE, Woods would spend 428 days in jail, and, when a judge determined that he was not competent to stand trial, he was forced to spend another 147 days at a California mental hospital. Iowa prosecutors say the court also ordered him placed on psychotropic medication.

Now prosecutors say law enforcement got it wrong.

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Another man, dubbed by prosecutors as “Wisconsin Bill,” is in fact Matthew David Keirans, 58, a high-level Iowa City hospital administrator, who had stolen the man’s identity more than 30 years ago after the two worked together at a hotdog cart in Albuquerque, N.M., in the late 1980s.

And “California Bill” had unjustly spent 575 days detained after he proclaimed his own identity and didn't waver.

Keirans pleaded guilty Monday, April 1, to one count of false statement to a national credit union administration insured institution and one count of aggravated identity theft, per a press release from the Northern District of Iowa U.S. Attorney's Office.

Keirans used Woods’ identity for “every aspect of his life requiring identification” for more than three decades, per the complaint.

In 2013, Keirans was hired under his Woods alias at the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics in Iowa City, Iowa, using false documents, including, per prosecutors: “a fictitious I-9 form, social security number, date of birth, and other identification documents in his victim’s name.” (He later worked at there remotely from Wisconsin.)

He also took out eight vehicle and personal loans totaling more than $200,000 from two Iowa credit unions, using Woods’ name, social security number, and date of birth. He also kept deposits at the national bank, where the actual Woods was arrested in his first attempt to report him.

Meanwhile, Woods, who was released from jail in 2021, after pleading no contest to the false charges in exchange for time served, began to investigate the man whose chicanery led to his being thrown in jail.

Coming across Keirans’s employment, in January 2023, Woods contacted the hospital’s security department, who in turn called local law enforcement.

In a July interview with the detective, Keirans, who had pretended to be Woods for more than half his life, called Woods “crazy” and said he “needed help and should be locked up.” During Woods’ incarceration, Keirans had called the LAPD and city’s district attorney’s office “numerous times” per prosecutors, “requesting updates” on Woods’ prosecution.

But Keirans’s identity theft scheme unraveled, prosecutors say, after DNA evidence proved an elderly man in Kentucky — who both Bills claimed to be their father — was in fact Woods’ father.

Keirans’s sentencing has not yet been slated, but prosecutors say he could spend as little as two years or as much as 32 years behind bars for the decades-long identity theft. He could also be fined $1.25 million.

His lawyer, Christopher J. Nathan, did not respond to PEOPLE’s request for comment in time for publication.

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