Sophia Dix, 35, of Newport News, was sentenced today to 15 months in prison for wire fraud. Dix was also sentenced to three years of supervised release and ordered to pay restitution in the amount of $97,584.94.
Dix pleaded guilty on April 25, 2016. According to court documents, from in or about April 2014, through in or about August 2015, Dix devised a scheme to defraud the Social Security Administration (SSA), where she was employed as a service representative at a district office in Norfolk. She had computer access to Social Security Administration beneficiary information, including bank account data for the direct deposit of benefit payments into the bank accounts of beneficiaries. Dix obtained monies for herself by fraudulently processing computer changes to beneficiary account information so that benefit payments would be deposited directly into prepaid reloadable debit card accounts that she opened at a financial institution in the name of a deceased beneficiary. As a result, Dix fraudulently diverted over $97,000 into the prepaid reloadable debit card accounts, which she used for her personal benefit.
We reviewed a random sample of 250 Title II spousal or widow(er) beneficiaries to determine whether they reported their marriages to SSA while they were receiving Title XVI payments as single individuals. Of the 250 beneficiaries, we identified 41 who did not appear to have reported their marriages to SSA while they were receiving Title XVI payments and may have received improper Title XVI payments because of spousal income.
We referred these 41 beneficiaries to our Office of Investigations (OI) to investigate their living arrangements while they were receiving Title XVI payments. OI determined seven beneficiaries were not living with their spouses so were not overpaid, and one beneficiary had potentially committed fraud, resulting in a $104,998 overpayment.
OI did not pursue investigations on the remaining 33 beneficiaries because the potential overpayments were below the applicable U.S. Attorneys’ thresholds for prosecution and/or the periods of potential overpayment were outside the statute of limitations. Since OI did not pursue investigations, we referred these 33 beneficiaries to SSA to assess any overpayments. Of the 33 beneficiaries, SSA determined
22 were not living with their spouses so were not overpaid, and
for 7, there was insufficient evidence to proceed with a review. For the remaining four beneficiaries, SSA’s review was ongoing as of July 2016.
Given that our audit did not identify a significant number of beneficiaries who were living with their spouses and overpaid while receiving Title XVI p ayments, we are not making a recommendation.Potentially, there are many people who would be affected if Social Security were to start trying to catch widows and widowers who failed to report marriages to the agency. There could be many overpayments and criminal prosecutions. Is Social Security willing to go there? Does Congress want them to? Is disability fraud the only fraud that Congress is interested in?
Secret files detailing the shadowy Middle Eastern business activities of Sir Mark Thatcher, son of the late former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, will be kept under lock and key in government archives instead of being published as expected.
Four batches of documents on the younger Thatcher are being retained despite official legislation dictating documents should be released after 20 years unless there are good reasons to retain them in Britain’s National Archives. ...
Two further files have been designated as "temporarily retained" and have been assigned no date for release. These are titled ‘Mark Thatcher and the Omanis; other allegations against Mark Thatcher’ and ‘Request by Electronic Data Systems to employ Mark Thatcher.’
It is thought the files pertain to Middle Eastern construction contracts and a role Mark Thatcher took up at the US Department of Social Security while his mother was still in high office.Of course, it's also an extremely stale story if it's any story at all.
We are proposing several revisions to our medical evidence rules. The proposals include redefining several key terms related to evidence, explaining what is and is not evidence, revising our list of acceptable medical sources (AMS), revising how we consider and articulate our consideration of medical opinions and prior administrative medical findings, revising who can be a medical consultant (MC) and psychological consultant (PC), revising our rules about treating sources, and reorganizing our evidence regulations for ease of use. These proposed revisions conform with the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2015 (BBA), reflect changes in the national healthcare workforce and in the manner that individuals receive primary medical care, simplify and reorganize our rules to make them easier to understand and apply, allow us to continue to make accurate and consistent decisions, and emphasize the need for objective medical evidence in disability and blindness claims.OMB has to approve the NPRM before it is published in the Federal Register. The public can then comment upon it. The agency must "consider" the comments but the "consideration" is generally limited to giving a brief explanation of why they don't agree with the comment unless the comment has to do with something as minor as punctuation. After that process is finished, the final regulation goes back to OMB and then into the Federal Register again after which it goes into effect. However, we'll have a new President and Commissioner before this happens.
