Posted on 12/03/2019 2:09:00 PM PST by csvset
A former Chicago police commander once considered a rising star in the department was spared federal prison Tuesday for pocketing more than $360,000 in Social Security payments intended for his mother that he continued to collect for nearly 25 years after her death.
U.S. District Judge Manish Shah sentenced Kenneth Johnson to two years of probation and ordered him to serve the first six months in community confinement, likely at the Salvation Army.
. In handing down the sentence, U.S. District Judge Manish Shah said Johnson’s decision to betray the public’s trust was “infuriating.” “How many times (as a police commander) did you plead with people to come forward and accept responsibly for something?” Shah said. “Yet all that while, there was a crime being committed that you knew all about, and you did nothing to stop it.”
Johnson, 55, pleading guilty in May to theft of government funds, admitting he bilked the Social Security Administration out of a total of $363,064 from the time of his mother’s death in May 1994 to November 2017 when the scheme was uncovered. In seeking up to two years in prison, federal prosecutors revealed in a court filing that Johnson withdrew some of the stolen funds from an ATM at the Englewood District police station. In 2016, Johnson used stolen funds to pay for a hotel room in Phoenix, according to the filing. Two months later, he used other Social Security payments for round-trip airfare to Los Angeles to attend a “crime-fighters conference,” prosecutors said.
The scheme was eventually unraveled by a watchdog arm of the Social Security Administration that red-flagged Johnson’s mother’s account in 2017 because she had not used Medicare, even though at that point she would have been 96, according to the prosecution filing..
(Excerpt) Read more at chicagotribune.com ...
Social Security does get notified.
When my father and mother passed away all information was automatically submitted on order to cease monthly deposits into their accounts.
I was not under the impression that the SSA sent out checks anymore.
Something’s fishy....
Why am I not surprised?
“The scheme was EVENTUALLY unraveled by a watchdog arm of the Social Security Administration.”
“Eventually”? Yeah; I’d say that 25 years qualifies as “eventually”. They’re right on the ball there at Social Security, aren’t they?
White privilege.
ML/NJ
Or do a Norman Bates
If a subject/citizen steals 360K from the government guess what would happen to them, “The Bed of Justice” is very uneven.
With his crime experience, he could do better than that.
Thanks for looking him up.
It’s worse if the SSA decides your dead and you aren’t.
They did with my Mom. Either by the funeral home or nursing home where she passed. I was the one dealing with her finances.
Cops are the biggest criminals.
Took 25yrs to uncover the fraud. Only because she had never used Medicare and was 96 and still getting SS checks.
Wonder how many other folks are doing this?
No mention of restitution.
.
Today this can't really happen. As soon as any SS beneficiary dies their name is put on the SS Master Death Index and all benefits are stopped and all credit cards are canceled.
He got two years probation and has to serve 6 months at Salvation Army. Wow all for stealing 360K from SS.
25 years of fraud.
They do now, or the funeral home does, but that has only been going on for the last several years.
Maybe they should make people on Medicare prove their identity with photo Id and require check into the SS in person. Photo Id on SS card in order to keep getting checks.
I see other folks got prison time. But an officer of the law gets probation. Unreal.
No that process of getting put on the SS Master Death Index is something that has been going on say the last 15 plus years. Before that there was no central clearing house for that information so unless the family notified the SS someone had died those payments could, did, still are going on if the deceased died as far back as that guys Mother did.
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