Alabama Department of Labor Commissioner Tom Surtees announced today that the Department has successfully prosecuted several Alabamians for unemployment compensation fraud. The following individuals were charged with violating the Alabama Unemployment Compensation Law by making false statements in claims for benefits:

 Demetrius D. Barkley, of Birmingham, was tried in Jefferson County District Court on May 6, 2013. An investigation by Labor’s Benefit Payment Control Section determined that Barkley received a total of $4,059 in benefits to which he was not entitled.

Barkley pled guilty and was sentenced to six months in jail, which was suspended, and 24 months of unsupervised probation. He was also ordered to pay restitution in the amount of benefits received illegally.

 Adron Turner, of Tuscaloosa, was tried in Tuscaloosa County District Court on May 1, 2013.

MONTGOMERY, AL (WSFA)- On Saturday, May 11, residents across America will be asked to help "Stamp Out Hunger" in the annual U.S. Postal Service Stamp Out Hunger Food Drive.

The one-day food drive is the nation's largest single-day food drive across America - and even includes Puerto Rico, Guam and the Virgin Islands.

You can help stamp out hunger as easily as checking your mailbox.

Just leave a bag of non-perishable food items by your mailbox on Saturday, May 11. Your letter carrier will pick it up and the items will be delivered to a local food bank.

Examples of non-perishable food items include:

• Peanut butter
• Canned soup
• Canned meat and fish
• Canned vegetables, fruits and juices
• Boxed goods (such as cereal)
• Pasta and rice

TROY – Calling on her father’s dinner-table wisdom remembered from her childhood, Congresswoman Martha Roby told Troy University students on Wednesday that they could achieve anything they wanted to achieve as long as they were willing to work for it.

The event was presented by the University’s Motivating and Instilling Sophisticated Students into an Elite Society (M.I.S.S. Elite), a student organization seeking to help students realize their full potential through building self-confidence, molding leadership skills and emphasizing good character and proper personal appearance.

“I grew up in a home where my dad said often around the dinner table, ‘You can be anything you want to be.’ I felt really empowered by those words,” Rep. Roby said. “It never occurred to me that I would face challenges because I was a woman. I believed that I could be anything I wanted to be because my dad told me so.”