Son hides mom’s death for 33 years — and steals $830,000 in benefits, feds say

A California man concealed his mother’s death for 33 years to continue collecting $830,000 in her government benefits, federal officials reported.

The 65-year-old Poway man pleaded guilty Tuesday, June 27, to charges including money laundering and Social Security fraud, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of California said in a news release.

He faces up to 25 years in prison and has agreed to repay $830,000 to the government, prosecutors said.

The man’s mother died in Japan in 1990, but he continued collecting payments from her widow’s pension from Social Security and from a U.S. Department of Defense annuity until 2022, prosecutors said.

After her death, he “maintained her bank accounts, forged her signature on certificates of eligibility to keep her government benefits in pay, and filed forged federal income tax returns, posing as his mother, for over two decades,” the release said.

He also used his mother’s identity to open fraudulent credit card accounts with at least nine different financial institutions, costing the companies $28,000, prosecutors said.

“This crime is believed to be the longest-running and largest fraud of its kind in this district,” said U.S. Attorney Randy Grossman in a statement. “This defendant didn’t just passively collect checks mailed to his deceased mother. This was an elaborate fraud spanning more than three decades that required aggressive action and deceit to maintain the ruse.”

He used the stolen money to pay off his mother’s Poway home, which he had fraudulently conveyed to himself shortly before her death, prosecutors said.

Poway is a community about 20 miles northeast of San Diego.

This story was originally published June 28, 2023 at 11:56 AM with the headline "Son hides mom’s death for 33 years — and steals $830,000 in benefits, feds say."