And You're Calling Her Confused?

From The Daily Telegraph of Temple, TX:

Dear Annie: I came to the United States back in the late 1980s. My husband at the time suddenly abandoned me and my two children. We entered a legal separation agreement in 1990 and eventually divorced in the early 2000s. ...

The reason I am writing this letter is because my ex-husband has been collecting Social Security from the United States under my name for the past year. I understand that this is legal to do. However, my ex-husband does not live in the United States and he’s using a false address of residence. He has only come to the United States in the past two years to file for Social Security, update his driver’s license and renew his passport. ...

My goal is to make this matter known. I am not looking for him to repay me any child support. My question, though, is how can we give someone Social Security without looking more in depth to his background? How is he proving that he’s a resident of the United States, for example? If someone is collecting Social Security through an ex-spouse, then why aren’t we checking to see if they paid all their child support? He’s currently lying to the federal office and benefiting on my behalf. ...

Dear Used and Confused: You can report Social Security fraud through the Social Security Administration website (https://www.ssa.gov/) or by calling the SSA at 1-800-269-0271. It sounds as though your husband has disqualified himself from receiving benefits in many ways. Also note that anyone who owes $2,500 or more in child support is not eligible to receive a U.S. passport. Talk to a lawyer about procuring the back pay of child support as well as preventing your husband from fraudulently claiming your SS benefits.

     It's certainly appropriate to report Social Security fraud but there are a few problems with this answer. First, it's not fraud to receive U.S. Social Security benefits while living in another country. In fact, there's about half a million people living outside U.S. borders who receive U.S. Social Security benefits and, no, you don't have to be a U.S. citizen to do so. Second, the writer should have told this woman that child support can be withheld from Social Security benefits. Third, the ex-husband getting benefits on the account doesn't reduce the benefits going to this woman. Whatever he gets is on top of what she gets, not subtracted from it. If she's smart, she can use him getting benefits on her account to collect the child support she's owed but not unless she gets better advice than this.

Briefs Filed In Lucia Case

     All of the amicus briefs, 23 of them, have been filed in Lucia v. S.E.C., the case pending before the Supreme Court on the question of whether Administrative Law Judges (ALJs), as presently appointed, are constitutional, at least at the S.E.C.
     Many readers will be interested in the amicus brief filed by the National Organization of Social Security Claimants Representatives (NOSSCR). It argues that if the Supreme Court is going to find S.E.C. ALJs unconstitutional, it should distinguish Social Security ALJs on the grounds that the cases they hear are non-adversarial. That's the argument NOSSCR pretty much has to make.
     The amicus brief that I like best is one filed by a group of 29 law professors who teach and write about administrative law. That brief calls upon the Supreme Court to be pragmatic. It gives a wider and deeper administrative law perspective largely absent from all the other briefs filed in the case. Here are a couple of excerpts:

The Court’s holding and approach in this case have major implications for the adjudicative structure of the federal government. If the Court were to apply the Tenth Circuit test [that found ALJs to be unconstitutional] to the five SEC ALJs as the basis for a holding that they are inferior officers, federal courts would be required to apply the same test to the 1,926 ALJs who perform analogous functions at other agencies. And it would almost certainly trigger similar challenges to decisions made by the thousands of non-ALJ adjudicators (often referred to as administrative judges or AJs) who perform analogous functions at other agencies. Together, ALJs and AJs preside at hearings in millions of adjudications each year.

If, as seems likely, that iterative process yielded a series of holdings that many thousand federal employees with responsibilities that include presiding at hearings are inferior officers, federal courts would then have to decide what to do about the cases that have been the subject of hearings presided over by those unconstitutionally appointed officers. Courts would also have to decide whether the statutory restrictions on removal of the members of this large new class of inferior officers are constitutional, an issue not before the Court in this case. The point, however, is that the stakes are sufficiently high to justify a judicial approach that preserves as much as possible the congressional design to check agency power through the use of ALJ. ...

The claims that SEC ALJs are biased in favor of the agency echo the widespread claims of bias that provided the impetus for Congress’s decision to enact the APA [Administrative Procedure Act, which led to the creation of the ALJ position]. That statute reduced significantly the potential for ALJ bias in the process of presiding over agency adjudications. Ironically, the claims of bias spawned by the SEC’s decision to bring some enforcement actions before ALJs, rather than federal district judges, have been coupled with the argument that SEC ALJs should be appointed by the agencies where they preside and should be removable at will by the agencies where they preside. 

It is hard to imagine a worse fit between an alleged problem in decision-making and a proposed remedy for that problem. If this Court makes a decision that cascades into a legal regime in which agencies have greater discretion in the process of appointing ALJs and have the discretion to remove ALJs without establishing any cause for removal, it will have eliminated many of the safeguards against pro-agency bias that Congress incorporated in the APA and that this Court praised as important mechanisms to protect the due process rights of the private parties who participate in agency hearings. That, of course, would increase the risk that SEC ALJs will make decisions that reflect pro-agency bias in their roles as presiding officers. ...

National Disability Forum

     From the Social Security Administration:

Social Security’s National Disability Forum is April 18 at 1100 New York Avenue in Washington D.C. The Disability Forum gives all interested stakeholders an opportunity to share their unique insights on topics of particular interest to Social Security. This allows an exchange of ideas early in the process and directly with policy makers.

With the theme of Financial Independence: Directing the Management of One’s Social Security Benefits, the forum will serve as a listening session that brings public awareness to disability and retirement policy stakeholders. Through this dialogue, we will gain insight into how our representative payee policy affects the disability and retirement communities we currently serve and the potential affect it may have in the future.

You and your clients can learn more at www.socialsecurity.gov/thirdparty/whatsnew.html.

Phishing Scheme Aimed At Social Security Disability Recipients

     From a television station that wants to be known as "News 6":

Florida residents who receive Social Security disability benefits are being targeted by imposters who claim their accounts have been hacked and  their SSN assets have been frozen. ...

Acting Inspector General Gale Stallworth Stone issued a statement on March 2 saying in part, “This phishing scheme is targeting unsuspecting persons for the purpose of Social Security benefit theft or identity theft.” ...

American Greed: Eric Conn

     CNBC will be airing an episode of its series American Greed dealing with the weird case of Eric Conn tonight at 10:00 pm Eastern and Pacific. 

     I've heard a rumor that someone is working on a separate documentary film on Conn.

Happy Easter!

Conn's Idiot Assistant Pleads Guilty

     From the Washington Times:

A man who helped the orchestrator of the largest Social Security fraud in U.S. history cut off his ankle bracelet and flee the country pleaded guilty Friday to his role in the escape, admitting he’d spent months working to set it up. 

Curtis Lee Wyatt had been the muscle for Eric C. Conn, a Kentucky lawyer who authorities say ran a fraud ring that totaled well more than $1 billion in bogus Social Security disability claims. ... 

Wyatt, 48, assisted along the way, helping arrange the getaway car and making test-runs to see which border checkpoint would be the easiest for his boss to escape through on his journey out of the U.S. 

Wyatt also arranged for Conn to have a Faraday bag — the device that allowed him to shield his ankle bracelet when he cut it off, this avoiding detection by the monitoring service. ...

Sorta Like Being The Acting Acting Commissioner

     Seen on the signature line of a routine Federal Register item posted today:

Nancy Berryhill, 

Deputy Commissioner for Operations,

performing the duties and functions not reserved to the Commissioner of Social Security.