Social Security and Income Fraud

Some fraudsters refuse to be deterred from carrying out illegal schemes. Even multiple convictions don’t seem to stop them. Shonta Nelson, 46, a.k.a. Meoshi Williams, was previously convicted in 2015 for stealing money from the fund that compensated victims from the Deepwater Horizon Oil...

The man who was at the center of the 2018 District 9 election scandal was sentenced to prison Thursday for collecting disability while being paid for working on campaigns. Leslie McCrae Dowless, 65, admitted to defrauding the Social Security Administration. (One scandal just wasn’t...

Everyone makes mistakes, even the government. Due to a one-digit error by the Social Security Administration (SSA), Frederick L. Guth, Jr., 66, of Brewerton, N.Y., collected more than $33,000 of someone else’s benefits. Guth filed for Social Security in 2016, and the SSA processed his...

A Kansas couple has been sentenced after fraudulently boosting their Social Security benefits. Addison Lewis, 41, and Brandi Lewis, 38, of Hutchinson, were deceptive about a medical condition, which led them to commit Social Security fraud. Addison Lewis deceived the federal government by misrepresenting his...

Michael Matherne, 61, of Louisiana, has pleaded guilty to Social Security Fraud for continuing to receive his wife’s Retirement Survivor Insurance (RSI) Benefits after her death. Matherne’s wife, M.F., began receiving Retirement Survivor Insurance Benefit (RSI) Program benefits in 1993. The RSI Program is operated...

Debbie Moore, 57, of Springfield, Mass., pleaded guilty and was sentenced for stealing over $260,000 in Social Security Retirement benefits on behalf of a dead relative. (Fraudsters who commit this kind of crime wrongly think their secret will go to the grave with their...

Ramon Hiciano, 59, pleaded guilty in federal court to using someone else’s Social Security number for personal gain to obtain health care benefits he was not entitled to. The Dominican national man, formerly of Roxbury, a neighborhood within the city of Boston, aimed to receive...

A Dominican national, Ronald Lara Pena, 35, has pleaded guilty to Social Security fraud after falsely using another’s Social Security number and lying about it. (Fraudsters tend to wrongly think that they’ll never get caught.) Lara Pena previously resided in Lawrence, Massachusetts and admitted to...

Leona Biser, 52, of Vestaburg, Pa., allegedly confined her 53-year-old, disabled sister to a wooden cage so that she could wrongfully collect her older sister’s Social Security Income payments. Biser claimed she kept her sister in a lumber and plywood, gated enclosure because she...

Samuel Pérez-Rivera of Puerto Rico prepared and submitted fraudulent psychiatric medical reports to the Social Security Administration (SSA). Dr. Américo Oms-Rivera signed the reports and both have been charged with conspiracy to commit wire fraud. Pérez-Rivera pleaded guilty to the sole count of Information on March 12, 2020. The same day, he was charged for fraud in the application process for...