Behind the Lie · Case File 001

The Real William Woods Was Branded an Impostor: How a 30-Year Identity Theft Fooled the Justice System

By Shen Zhiyi

In August 2019, William Woods walked into a Los Angeles bank to report that someone had stolen his identity. He brought identification bearing his real name. The bank contacted the person controlling the accounts, who answered its security questions and said nobody in California had permission to access them. Police arrested Woods.

The man on the telephone was Matthew David Keirans, a former coworker who had used Woods’s identity for decades. The case shows how records pointing to the same person can all trace back to a single false claim.

A stolen name becomes a life

Woods and Keirans worked together in Albuquerque, New Mexico, in the late 1980s. Over the following decades Keirans used Woods’s information to obtain official documents, employment, credit, and loans. In 2012, he obtained a certified birth certificate in Woods’s name. The following year he secured a hospital IT job.

The Justice Department identified nine credit-union loans totaling more than $250,000 that Keirans obtained using Woods’s identity between 2014 and 2022. The more records he accumulated, the easier it became for institutions to take the next record at face value.

Who knew the account?

At the bank, Woods could present genuine identification, but he could not answer questions about accounts he had never controlled. Keirans could. He also supplied police with documents bearing Woods’s name.

Knowing the answers showed familiarity with the accounts. The dispute was whether the person who had built that familiarity was also the person named in the records. The NIST digital identity guidelines provide a framework for understanding the difference between authenticating a returning account user and establishing an underlying identity.

When the victim became the defendant

Los Angeles County prosecutors charged Woods. He continued to insist that he was William Woods. A court found him incompetent to stand trial in February 2020, and he spent time in a state psychiatric hospital. The records establish that he disputed his assigned identity throughout the proceedings. They do not establish that this was the sole basis for the competency finding.

In March 2021, Woods entered a no-contest plea and was sentenced to time served. He was released with a conviction under the wrong name.

Evidence outside the disputed records

In 2023, Woods contacted the Iowa hospital where Keirans worked. University of Iowa police examined evidence from outside the financial and identification documents, including DNA evidence involving Woods and his father. When a detective confronted Keirans with the findings, Keirans confessed.

In April 2024, a California court vacated both of Woods’s convictions, for identity theft and false impersonation, and found him factually innocent. In January 2025, Keirans was sentenced to 12 years in federal prison. The Eighth Circuit upheld the sentence in April 2026.

What followed 576 days in custody

In May 2025, the California Victim Compensation Board approved $80,640 for 576 days of wrongful confinement, including Woods’s time in a state hospital. That amount reflected California’s statutory rate of $140 per day.

The separate civil lawsuit

Woods filed a federal civil-rights lawsuit on April 10, 2026. The civil complaint states allegations. The criminal proceedings against Keirans and the finding of Woods’s factual innocence are established in separate records.

Public docket checked November 13, 2026. The available records show orders dismissing individual counts in September, motions to dismiss the amended complaint, and later docket activity through November 10. The records reviewed did not establish the disposition of those motions or a final judgment resolving the entire lawsuit.

Across the bank, police investigation, and prosecution, the same disputed identity gained credibility as each institution received information that appeared to corroborate it. Independent evidence finally gave investigators a way to test where those records came from.

Case timeline

Source records

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