Woman Gets 25 Year Prison Sentence for Impersonating Her Deceased Mother to Steal $360K in Social Security Benefits—
(KNSI) – A 54-year-old Austin woman has been sentenced to a year in prison for orchestrating an elaborate 25-year fraud scheme that netted her over $360,000 in stolen Social Security benefits by impersonating her deceased mother.
According to court documents, Redmond’s fraud began in 1999, immediately following her death. Rather than reporting the death to the Social Security Administration as required by law, Redmond contacted the Social Security Administration with a hypothetical question: if her mother had died, what steps would she need to take? When told she would need to report the death to terminate benefits, Redmond chose to continue collecting them.
Over the following decades, she was accused of regularly posing as her mother in phone calls and in-person visits to federal offices. She forged her signature on official documents, used her Social Security number and date of birth, and even updated her mother’s address to match her own residence changes.
