From a press release:
The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Colorado announced Justin Skiff, age 36, of Castle Pines, pleaded guilty today to wire fraud, social security fraud and money laundering.
According to the plea agreement, beginning around August 2019 and continuing through September 2021, Skiff used his position as a claims specialist with the Social Security Administration (SSA), to fraudulently obtain money from the SSA. Skiff used his knowledge and access to establish Social Security Numbers for ten fictitious children. He then established fictitious records of entitlements for surviving child benefits which he connected to the record of a real deceased individual whose children would receive benefits. These benefits were deposited into a bank account accessible to Skiff through debit cards he directed to be mailed to a P.O. Box to which he had access. Skiff withdrew money and made purchases from this account from October 2019 through September 2021 for a total amount of $324,201.44.
Judge Daniel D. Domenico presided over the change of plea hearing on March 8, 2023. Skiff will be sentenced on June 6, 2023. Wire fraud carries a penalty of up to 20 years in prison and a fine of $250,000. Social Security fraud carries a penalty of up to 5 years in prison and a fine of $250,000. Money laundering carries a penalty of up to 20 years in prison and a fine of $500,000 or twice the value of the property involved in the transaction. Skiff must also forfeit any property derived from proceeds traceable to the scheme.
8 comments:
Glad he was caught. Not sure it was a good idea to come up with kids names of characters in TV shows.
OMG! there are no words to describe my anger over this. I hope he gets the full 20 years. He has just made our work ever so much harder! smdh
This is frighteningly easy to do, which is why integrity is taken so seriously in our hiring process. That said, it is shocking that it took so long for an OS or DM to notice what was going on.
So dumb.
Article has to be wrong somewhere. 10 kids on one individual's record would bump against family maximum in no time flat.
I bet he got caught from the payee side. Kids need payees.....
Other articles show it was 2 kids per record and he did it every other month or so. He received the money for all but 2 kids. A partner received for 2 of them. Apparently he looked for people with high PIAs that had no other survivors.
Given all the maildrops, etc., how did they even come to suspect this guy? It's previously been reported that SS was paying for more people over age 100 than are known to exist, and those cases should stick out like a sore thumb. This guy had to be down in the noise.
SSA was catching employees committing fraud back in 1979 when I was hired. 44 years later and they still don't have safeguards to prevent this?
Post a Comment