From a press release:
A former Social Security employee has admitted to conspiracy and aggravated identity theft, announced U.S. Attorney Nicholas J. Ganjei.
David Lam, 45, Pearland, was an operations supervisor and claims specialist for the Social Security Administration (SSA) office in Houston. …
Lam admitted to working with various coconspirators—typically, women with children—to file fraudulent survivor benefits applications listing the deceased men as the children’s fathers or stepfathers. If true, this would have entitled the women to receive benefits while raising their children as widows. However, the women had no connection to the men listed on the applications and the deceased men did not father the children. To facilitate his scheme, Lam would utilize the deceased men’s names, dates of birth and death and Social Security numbers.
He would also instruct the coconspirators to split the stolen funds with him. The women would transfer funds via applications like Zelle, CashApp or Chime. Lam agreed to take responsibility for causing $3,346,280 in loss to the SSA and has agreed to pay that amount in restitution. …
4 comments:
Some articles indicate Lam coached women with children to claim they were married in Texas under common law. I work in a state that doesn't recognize common law marriages. I've only had two cases in 30 years. One was obviously legitimate as the widow had lots of paperwork showing she and deceased considered themselves married. The other was dubious. They did live together but the deceased had just made out a will a few months before he died and said he was single. None of her paperwork supported her claim and it was denied. If Lam took the claims when he was a claims specialist, it's easy to see how he could approve them. As a supervisor, I wonder how he could coach anyone well enough to get a common law claim approved.
That was a lot of money. Hope he does some serious time as a deterrent
I thought there was no fraud?
If you work or ever worked at SSA, or have a minimal idea of how gov works, you would not be asking this question. There always being fraud in GOV, not to the magnitude it is portrayed right now. One example of other GOV agencies committing fraud is congress with the inside trading-So what is the point of your question?
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