From the
Los Angeles Times:
A federal grand jury has indicted an employee at the Social Security Administration’s Whittier office on charges that she stole money from beneficiaries.
Gezal Rebbecca Duran, 32, of Pomona was indicted Tuesday on four counts of theft by a government employee.
Duran, who worked as a claims representative, allegedly told benefit recipients that they had received overpayments and needed to pay her in order to bring their accounts current. Investigators believe she sole more than $17,000 from at least 15 benefit recipients, said Thom Mrozek, a spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office in Los Angeles.
7 comments:
Surprise surprise. A social security employee maybe a criminal.
I know I shouldn't respond to you, but 9:14 you are way out of line. It is unusual and disgraceful for any Federal employee, let along an SSA employee, to do such a thing. I hope she gets a maximum penalty. Not only did she commit a crime but against our beneficiaries! That will not be tolerated.
I agree this is highly unusual (and stupid) for an SSA employee. There are lots of controls to make sure that such criminals are caught. Although there are lots of corrupt governments in the world, you can be assured that the Social Security Administration takes integrity very seriously.
I'm having a hard time figuring out how this scheme could work. I doubt she was reckless enough to create manual letters with imaginary overpayment amounts and send them to claimants. Was she talking to a claimant in the office about some other issue, and just added, "Oh, by the way, you are overpaid $100"? Did the claimant then fork over $100 cash without getting a receipt?
I think just goes to show that not all SSA employees are the sharpest tool in the shed.
As Bill Engvall says, Here's your sign.
Could have had claimant make out check for refund, telling them to leave it blank on the pretext of stamping SSA in the blank, then cashing it themselves, along with inputting a waiver of the overpayment. Really stupid for the relatively small amounts of money that you could get because of reviews required on larger amounts.
And she was a claims rep, which means she had a decent salary in the first place--not like a clerical or sr in a major urban area. Most fraud by SSA employees is just stupidity--like selling SSN cards for as little as $ 50.00, which has happened.
New SSN's and even replacement cards have new security mesaures in place to track every move. New SSN's in particular require 2nd and sometimes 3rd levels of verification.
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