From the Associated Press:
As disbarred lawyer Eric Conn sits in a federal prison, hundreds of people in one of America’s poorest regions remain mired in the legal mess he caused by running a $600 million fraud, the largest Social Security scam in U.S. history.
Many of Conn’s former clients in eastern Kentucky’s Appalachian mountains, who counted on him for help getting their disability benefits, could again lose their monthly support.
About 1,700 people already went through hearings to prove their disabilities after his fraud was exposed about six years ago, and roughly half lost their benefits as a result. Some 230 of these recipients managed to get their benefits restored years later by court orders, only to learn they may have to prove it all over again.
That’s the situation confronting Mary Sexton, who suffers from scoliosis and has had two brain surgeries, plus spinal surgery to fuse vertebrae in her neck. Her maladies have left her with a limp and other chronic symptoms including headaches, kidney problems and an inability to concentrate that forced her to quit college.
A court order restored her $1,100-a-month disability benefit in November. But two months later, she received a letter from the Social Security Administration telling her she would have to appear before an administrative judge to prove she is legally entitled to them. ...
In a statement to The Associated Press, the Social Security Administration said it is bound by law to “conduct redeterminations of entitlement when there is a reason to believe fraud or similar fault was involved in a person’s benefit application.” The statement said Conn’s fraud, exposed by two agency employees in a whistleblower suit, is “well-documented.” ...
In a letter to the acting commissioner of the Social Security Administration, Rep. Hal Rogers said the agency has spent millions to deny relatively small sums to unwitting victims of a con job. “These individuals are the victims of fraud, not the perpetrators, and it’s time for their uncertainty and anxiety to end,” the Kentucky Republican wrote, arguing for a process that would keep them out of court.
9 comments:
Makes you wonder why Rep. Rogers voted against the American Relief Plan of 2021 in Congress.
These folks are also victims of an arrogant, dysfunctional government bureaucracy that failed to have adequate safeguards in place to prevent massive fraud.
That kind of stress can certainly make a disability worse....much worse. SSA needs to use this as a guide for future incidents like this to insure those that are victims of such fraud, not have to suffer so. It's not good for the ones that were truly disabled. Cutting all benefits to vast majority (if not all) the clients of his was the worst thing SSA could have done to them. One shouldn't have to suffer for the evils of others. This whole incident is a nightmare for all involved. Conn's fraud ruined peoples already tough lives. Yes, some did not meet the disability criteria... they should have to pay back the funds, however, SSA needs to be patient for once. I know it's a mess, but SSA needs to learn that pulling funds can leave a truly disabled person destitute, or worse.
I'm willing to believe that majority of Conn's clients were disabled which is why they contacted him in the first place. The fraud part was getting a certain ALJ to get all your cases and get them before other cases in the cases in the rotation. The sad part was the mistreatment of the OHO employees that were trying to do their job.
The main conspirator in the fraud was the ALJ. No evidence that ANY claimant knowingly participated in a fraud. But, doing the "right thing" is a foreign concept to the government in general and especially SSA.
1:53 - yeah, it is the government's fault that a Conn could get benefits for a lot of people that did not deserve them, and others who did but he took the illegal and easy way out by bribery and payoffs. Yet those who fairly adjudicate claims are now supposed to "take the rep and claimant's words as the Gospel, when even a cursory glance at Facebook or an inmate database makes it clear they are defrauding the Agency. The playing field is not level by any means, and taxpayer money is flowing out like a river.
@9:37 - Yes, it is the agency's fault that it failed to notice such a massive fraud scheme. According to the whistleblower in the case, what was going on was not a secret in the office but because they were processing good numbers of cases, no one cared. That is ALL this agency cares about is numbers. They provide very little oversight regarding the quality of decisions the ALJs are making. THey only care that they are turning out enough cases. That is why this judge was able to get away with this to such a massive degree. If the agency had any real quality control, they would have caught this before the numbers became so large. So, yes, 9:37, it is they agency's fault.
@9:37
Of course it's the agency's fault. The OHO whistleblowers in this case made SSA aware that there was a HUGE problem with the particular ALJ in question, yet nothing was done until the very end. Since then, the same higher-ups in the agency who did nothing with the whistleblower complaints have been trying to make this look like all claimants and reps need to be questioned for their integrity and that problems like this are widespread. There's ZERO evidence of that. There's also ZERO evidence that there are other corrupt ALJs taking bribes to pay cases. It's too bad this whole thing happened, but there's definitely not any evidence of there being a widespread problem.
Also, your allegation that taxpayer money is "flowing out like a river" is complete bullcrap. Whatever your agenda is, stop. You're leaving a wake of destruction for truly disabled people.
Continued benefits plus a Medical CDR for every one of his clients would have established most of the fraudulent cases while simultaneously minimizing the friendly fire casualties.
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