Olabanji Otufale was a New York City fraud investigator, tasked with probing to make sure people applying for homeless services were actually homeless.

But he ended up deep in fraud himself.

Otufale was slapped with a 27-month prison sentence by a federal judge this week after he admitted to skimming the identities of the very homeless people he was supposed to be overseeing, then gave their information to a serial scammer who used it to file fake pandemic-era unemployment claims.

“Otufale betrayed the public trust and conspired to use his access for illicit financial gain,” said John J. Durham, the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York.

Otufale was working for New York’s Department of Homeless Services despite a previous fraud conviction, for which he was put on probation. And when authorities nabbed him for the homeless identity scam, he was already facing charges in Delaware related to a scam to open a bank account under a bogus identity.

In this case, authorities said he used his access to city computer systems to pilfer homeless people’s personal information. He took photos of the screens and sent them via an app to his confederate, Marc Lazarre, who filed the unemployment applications.

Lazarre, who has also pleaded guilty, ended up with only $182 from the scam, but prosecutors said that wasn’t for lack of trying. It was because so many of the homeless names Otufale stole had already applied for unemployment benefits on their own.

“Told you these bums b on it,” Lazarre texted to Otufale at one point after coming up empty with a batch of identities.

Prosecutors had asked the judge to put Otufale away for up to 40 months.

“While the total loss amount is small in this case, the seriousness and brazenness of the defendant’s criminal conduct as well as his breach of public trust to engage in the conspiracy warrants a serious term of incarceration,” Katherine Onyshko, an assistant U.S. attorney, told the judge.

Elizabeth Macedonio, Otufale’s lawyer, pleaded with the judge for leniency, saying that except for stealing identities, he showed a “remarkable work ethic.”

She said Otufale shouldn’t have had to go to prison at all, but he received the two-year mandatory prison term for identity theft.