A clinical psychologist in San Diego is going to federal prison for a scheme that allowed patients to falsely collect disability benefits and to avoid taking English tests for U.S. citizenship.
The U.S. attorney's office says Roberto J. Velasquez was sentenced Wednesday to 21 months in prison and ordered to repay more than $1.5 million to the Social Security Administration.
Prosecutors say Velasquez charged dozens of patients $200 each to falsely certify that they were disabled. He made up patient histories and fabricated test results.
Velasquez acknowledged falsifying two types of disability forms - one for some patients to obtain Social Security benefits and another that allowed some 50 immigrants to avoid taking the English language and civics portions of citizenship exams.
6 comments:
21 months? what a joke.
He probably only get the 21 months for defrauding DHS because of the citizenship exams.
Sadly, SSA will probably recover so little of the restitution. Well, the USAO will recover very little, even if it gets referred for a DOJ civil suit.
USAO does not need to commence a civil suit to collect. Assuming for the sake of argument the good doctor tries to avoid the payment schedule ordered by the district court, the criminal division has folks who are very good at tracking down assets and collecting. In addition, once the doctor is released from his term of imprisonment, he will surely be on supervised release for a time period. If he makes a habit of not paying in accordance with his schedule, he will get violated and face being returned to federal prison.
The last name was the giveaway. You see it over and over again in these immigration crimes. But usually it's an employee at the Department of Motor Vehicles that's making drivers and citizens out of illegals.
Is SSA stopping the benefits of those falsely awarded benefits and charging those recipients with fraud?
And that is the $million dollar question, isn't it? What do you think?? Should go after them hard and throw them in jail.
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