A Georgia woman who used her position at a retirement recordkeeping firm to drain the accounts of federal employees will spend the next four years in prison following a federal investigation in Alabama.
On Friday, Acting United States Attorney Kevin Davidson announced that 31-year-old Tekia Sade Peay of LaGrange, Georgia, was sentenced to 51 months behind bars, followed by three years of supervised release.
The sentence, handed down by a federal judge on February 11, 2026, comes after Peay pleaded guilty to a string of charges, including conspiracy, wire fraud, money laundering, and aggravated identity theft. Because the federal system does not offer parole, Peay is expected to serve the vast majority of that time.
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The case began in August 2023 when the FBI flagged suspicious transactions within the Thrift Savings Plan (TSP), the retirement system used by millions of federal workers. Investigators discovered that Peay, while employed by a company providing recordkeeping services for the TSP, was leveraging her internal knowledge of call center procedures to bypass security.
She used the personal information of account holders to hijack their online profiles—often focusing on individuals who were elderly or deceased.
Once she gained control of the accounts, Peay and a co-conspirator changed account details to bypass verification and requested cash disbursements. These funds were then funneled into bank accounts she controlled. While the total attempted theft reached over $76,000, she successfully pocketed $21,508.32 before the scheme was shut down.
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“The sentencing in this case holds the defendant accountable for orchestrating an account takeover scheme that targeted elderly and deceased Thrift Savings Plan annuitants,” said Special Agent in Charge Jason J. Scalzo, of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation Office of Inspector General (FDIC OIG), Electronic Crimes Unit. “The FDIC OIG will continue to investigate and bring to justice those who target our Nation’s most vulnerable, and threaten to undermine the integrity of our Nation’s financial system.”
“This sentencing demonstrates the FBI’s commitment to holding accountable those who use their positions of trust to steal other people’s hard-earned money to line their own pockets,” said Daniel Wierzbicki, Special Agent in Charge of the FBI Washington Field Office’s Counterintelligence and Cyber Division. “We work with our partner agencies every day to identify and bring to justice those who fraudulently access government systems.”
Beyond her prison term, Peay has been ordered to pay $21,508.32 in restitution. The money will go to her former employer, which had already reimbursed the affected TSP account holders for their losses. The investigation was a joint effort between the FBI’s Washington Field Office and the FDIC Office of Inspector General.
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