From a press release:
Sean Okrzesik, age 34, of Syracuse, was arrested on March 23 on charges of theft of government property and Social Security fraud related to his diversion of Supplemental Security Income (SSI) benefits into bank accounts he set up in the names of beneficiaries or their representative payees while he was employed in the Syracuse District Office of the Social Security Administration.
I keep mentioning an ironic fact. In the wake of the Eric Conn fiasco Social Security purchased expensive software programs to spot data anomalies that might indicate fraud. They expected to find widespread fraud by claimants and their representatives but it wasn’t there. What they've found instead has been a modest amount of fraud by their own employees.
15 comments:
"SSA Fraud...fraud fraud fraud fraud" is a battle cry for the government. Little do they know (well...I could stop there, really), the fraud is coming from within. I'm not saying it doesn't happen with claimants and reps, of course, however, it sure seems to be a lot more inner-staff that's the problem. Of course, that would be ignored for the ones that want to "rework" the SSA system, I am sure.
Lest we forget...even the Eric C. Conn ordeal was instigated by ALJ David Daugherty, as admitted in his own plea agreement.
Yes, SSA's ability to monitor its internal computer/payment systems for rather blatant abnormalities and relative inability to know the ins and outs of every private medical visit, relationship, or document belonging to millions of individuals/provider5s indicates that the only fraud happening here is on the employee side. Airtight logic.
I think it is far easier to find 20 doctors who will lie to you (the patient), claiming they WILL help you IF they can't fix you, than it is to find 1 who will help you (legitimately) get disability. Most will tell you they WON'T or can't help you. The same doctors who filled out forms saying you couldn't do your job for the next 30 days... for months...to an employer... Refused to even consider doing the same for SSA. So, you ask them, WHEN could you return to WHAT job? The response was ALWAYS the same: "I don't know... But, there must be SOMETHING you can do." My response, "What job would YOU hire me for?" Never got an answer to that! The idea of doctors committing fraud to help a claimant is almost entirely a myth. Most claimants don't have the money to actually bribe a doctor... Only a scheme like Daugherty and Conn cooked up or the one in NY are even conceivable. Why would a doctor even consider a one time bribe? If by fraud, you mean one claimant conning doctors and SSA... I think there's at least 30 (or 100? a thousand?) legitimate claims denied for every 1 fraud that gets by.
The agency is so concerned with fraud committed by reps that they refused to comply with the law regarding acceptance of electronic signatures. I"ve never heard of a case or a rep doing something that would cause such concern that the agency would thumb its nose at federal law, but, hey, maybe its out there. For me, (and I'm sure for 99.9999999999.... percent of attorneys out there, a few disabilty fees is not worth losing my license, going to jail, etc. But, the agency made a big deal out of requiring "wet" signatures until they got sued. Then the pandemnic gave them a way to save face and finally comply with the law. Really, the idea of any significant number of false claims being submitted by reps is ridiculous. Could it happen, yes. Does it happen, probably would be extremely rare. Seems the agency really should focus more on the problem of employees diverting funds to their own bank accounts.
In line with Tim's comment: Why is it fraud for a doctor to lie to help a disability claimant get benefits but not for a DDS doctor to lie to wrongly deny a claimant or fail to review records and wrongly deny a claimant. Seems like double standards are the norm at SSA.
The number of SSA employees who divert funds into their own accounts is miniscule, and those who do are caught. The safeguards are such that only an employee who is a fool would attempt this. It is also a betrayal of the public trust and any such employee should do time in prison IMO.
We cannot just assume that SSA employees are dishonest based upon an isolated case like this. That is painting with way too broad of a brush.
Actually 4:42, I think this has happened multiple times. No one said all SSA employees are dishonest but SSA seems to be putting its concerns in the wrong places.
Another way to look at this is the practicality of investigation and prosecution. There actually probably are a significant number of individuals committing fraud by concealing work activity or feigning greater limitations that they actually have; these would typically be claimants acting on their own or possibly with the help, knowing or not, of a representative, but would not involve SSA employees. Then there are systematic schemes like the one in this article, or like Conn/Daughtery, that more commonly do involve SSA employees in order to be worth the risk. OIG has limited resources and will investigate and prosecute systematic fraud schemes much more than it can afford to do with individual fraud. What I'm left wondering is how the smaller number of systematic fraud cases compare to the likely larger number of individual fraud cases in terms of total impact on the trust funds and tax base.
SSA knows every keystroke each employee makes. If you notice, employee fraud that is caught is usually short term (like a year or so) and is caught pretty quickly. You don't read about it in the paper for a while as there is due process, a trial (possibly), etc. It's crazy to risk a good job for whatever money one thinks they can divert for their own benefit.
Every f seven years or so,, the federal police come into the SSA payment center where I work and haul someone out for fraud. They prefer to arrest them at work where it's safe for the police.
It's quite embarrassing and humiliating for the employee concerned. The police were coming for an employee in my mod one day, but my manager talked them into letting him walk the employee down to them at the entrance.. . To save him the embarrassment of being taken out in front of all his coworkers.
I agree 7:48 it seems no SSA employee gets away with it for years they are caught pretty quickly.
To add to 5:51’s point, it is not uncommon for the CDIU to find evidence of fraud, but rather than prosecuting the individual, those claimants are simply just denied or ceased if previously awarded benefits. Internal fraud is far worse than fraud from members of the public simply due to the public trust employees are responsible for.
Of course, this blog isn’t nearly as interested in fraud committed by the public anyway. There was a story last week about a Dayton man charged with disability fraud (https://dayton247now.com/news/local/dayton-man-charged-in-relation-to-social-security-fraud-church-theft-incidents) that wasn’t mentioned here. On top of that, on the rare occasions such stories are shared, we get to read about gilding the lily or something to downplay it.
The kind of person that would risk federal prison and losing their 60-70k federal job are not the kind of masterminds that would make brilliant long-term plans to avoid getting caught
The truth is this is a pretty damn clean system all around. The finger pointing is pretty stupid. Go to Wall Street and look for fraud. Look to Congress and their insider trading. Has any congressperson been charged for buying and selling stock after being briefed privately about the coming pandemic. HELL NO!
So, 9:43, why did the agency thumb its nose at the electronic signature statutes for so long?
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