From a press release:
The United States Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of Pennsylvania announced that Takiyah Gordon Austin, age 47, formerly of Wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania, pleaded guilty yesterday before U.S. District Court Judge Malachy E. Mannion, for a scheme to fraudulently obtain unemployment benefits related to COVID-19 emergency relief funds. ...
Takiyah Gordon Austin engaged in a scheme to abuse her position as a claims specialist for the Social Security Administration in order to obtain the personally identifiable information of unsuspecting individuals. Austin then utilized that information to file for and receive fraudulent Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA) claims and benefit payments. As part of the scheme, Austin also filed PUA claims for ineligible individuals in exchange for payment from the individuals.
The fraud pulled in over $288,000. She was charged with wire fraud among other offenses. Wire fraud has a 20 year maximum jail term.
That would be about 3 years gross pay. It's so disappointing when coworkers abuse the system and commit crimes.
ReplyDeleteThrow the book at her and those who helped her. Maximum sentence of 20+ years, depending on charges. THIS is what the gov't just waits to hear so they can say that SSA is wrought with fraud.
ReplyDeleteWell, technically, this wasn't SSA fraud per se.
ReplyDeleteSure, it was an SSA employee, but she was committing fraud in a non-SSA program. She probably was obtaining the information within SSA systems to begin many of individual fraud items, but unless she was just looking things up willy nilly there isn't a lot SSA could do to catch it.
Personally, if I was so inclined (which I am not, by the way), just from working the window, answering the phones, and doing claims I could easily amass SSNs with complete identifying information and addresses for well over 100 SSNs a week and the agency wouldn't be the wiser. Why? Well the accesses would be relatively random in nature (based upon visits/calls/claims) and would be covered by legitimate business need so long as I didn't try to access stuff i wasn't working on.
Personally, I would be joyous to see the lady get the full 20 years (and more). But she'll probably plead out with maximum publicity for the prosecutor, or have a bleeding-heart judge who'll sentence her to minimum time with ordered restitution she'll never be able to afford to pay back working part time at the local fast food joints when she gets out.
20 years? You can get out earlier for murder.
ReplyDeleteSSA is full of fraud, you can find an article on it every single day.
ReplyDeleteIf there is money there is fraud, and it is substantial, but there is little to do about most of it.
How long did this scam run ? What exactly does OIG and systems do ? I understand every key stroke is captured. My guess maybe 24 months and resitution. State charges to follow ?
ReplyDeleteAnd yet Social Security employees are to be on the look out for fraudulent claimants. smdh Can we just put this fraudulent claimant stuff on the back burner and get the fraud people working the claims that are so far behind? Sheesh!
ReplyDeleteIf that would help. We have one OIG guy for an area of about 2 million.
Delete