Woman Collected Dead Mom’s Benefits for 25 Years
(Getty/Richard Stephen)
A woman from northwest Indiana has been sentenced to prison after admitting she improperly received Social Security payments intended for her deceased mother for more than two decades.
Rose Henderson, 62, was ordered by a federal judge in Hammond, Indiana, to spend 12 months in prison after acknowledging that she continued collecting her mother’s Social Security benefits from 1996 until 2021. According to the Chicago Tribune, the payments added up to roughly $365,000 over that period.
Prosecutors described the case as unusually serious because of how long the fraud continued and the amount of money involved. Assistant U.S. Attorney Thomas McGrath said the scale and length of the scheme made it a particularly striking example of Social Security fraud.
Henderson’s defense attorney told the court that she has lived with a disability since she was 25 years old, though the exact condition was not identified. The lawyer also said she has experienced periods of homelessness.
U.S. District Judge Gretchen Lund said the actions were not accidental but instead carried out in a deliberate and organized way. In addition to the one-year prison sentence, the judge ruled that Henderson’s future disability payments will be partially withheld so the government can recover the money she owes.
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