Social Security gets raped again

Wed, 28 Feb 2007 00:12:35 -0500 by Bull

Friends, we’ve got to get tougher on folks like the ones in the following Associated Press story.

TACOMA, Wash. — A Vancouver woman admitted Monday that she coached her two children — beginning when they were 4 and 8 years old — to fake retardation so she could collect Social Security benefits on their behalf.

Rosie Costello, 46, pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court to conspiracy to defraud the government as well as Social Security fraud. Her son, Pete Costello, 26, pleaded guilty earlier this month, but the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Seattle said Monday that authorities had not located her daughter, Marie.

According to the plea agreement, Costello began coaching her daughter at age 4, and later used the same ruse with her son. He continued to feign retardation into his mid-20s — picking at his face, slouching and appearing uncommunicative in meetings with Social Security officials.

The scheme came to light last year after Pete Costello got a traffic ticket while driving away from the administration’s Vancouver office, then was videotaped acting normally when he contested the ticket in court.

Rosie Costello admitted that she collected more than $280,000 in benefits, beginning in the mid-1980s. Most were paid by Social Security, but the state Department of Social and Health Services paid $53,000.

Pete Costello is scheduled to be sentenced May 11 and faces a standard sentencing range of six months to one year in prison, as well as $59,000 in restitution. Rosie Costello is scheduled for sentencing May 17; her standard sentencing range was not immediately available, but in the plea agreement she agreed to repay the government.

As most of my readers are aware, I draw a disability check myself over spinal cord injuries. It took three and a half years from my original date of filing to get through the horse-crap red tape, leaving me financially destitute and darn near to filing bankruptcy. (Frankly speaking, the jury is really still out on that bit.) In my case I had the Veterans Administration and Emory University surgeons on my side along with nearly a decade worth of medical records. Still ended up going before a federal Administrative judge before my claim was ok’d.

Just considering my experience, not to mention the thousands of others - some missing both legs - that have had the same treatment by the government, you’d think that scam artist like the ones mentioned above couldn’t possibly sneak through. Yet somehow they do. Social Security is in trouble. That is plain to see from simple math. My generation of ‘Baby-Boomers’ are nearing retirement. The number of disabled in any given year is added to that. Throw in survivor’s benefits and a falling number of folks paying in each year and you soon see that it is not a self-sustaining government service. If that wasn’t enough, we then have to consider the fact that illegal aliens pay nothing into the plan to begin with -and- that the Social Security Trust is the politician’s idea of free money for pork-barrel spending.

Yep, we’re screwed.

Bull, out.