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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsRetired Judge, Attorney and Psychologist Indicted in $600 Million Social Security Fraud Scheme
https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/retired-judge-attorney-and-psychologist-indicted-600-million-social-security-fraud-schemeDepartment of Justice
Office of Public Affairs
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Tuesday, April 5, 2016
Retired Judge, Attorney and Psychologist Indicted in $600 Million Social Security Fraud Scheme
Thousands of Kentucky Claimants Improperly Received Disability Benefits
A retired administrative law judge, a lawyer and a psychologist were charged in a federal indictment unsealed today for their roles in a scheme to fraudulently obtain more than $600 million in federal disability payments for thousands of claimants.
(snip)
David Black Daugherty, 81, of Myrtle Beach, South Carolina; Eric Christopher Conn, 55, and Alfred Bradley Adkins, 44, both of Pikeville, Kentucky, were charged in an 18-count indictment returned on April 1, 2016, in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Kentucky. The indictment was unsealed upon Conns arrest and initial court appearance today before U.S. Magistrate Judge Robert E. Wier of the Eastern District of Kentucky. Conn was detained pending his detention hearing, which is scheduled for April 7, 2016.
(snip)
The indictment alleges that from October 2004 to Feb. 13, 2012, Conn, Daugherty and Adkins conspired to defraud the government by, among other things, submitting false and fraudulent medical documentation to the SSA in order to have the SSA pay claimants retroactive disability benefits, continue to pay claimants disability benefits in the future, award Medicare and Medicaid benefits to claimants and pay Conns attorney fees. According to the indictment, the conspirators intended that the SSA disburse more than $600 million in disability benefits in more than 2,000 cases to claimants in Kentucky and elsewhere, irrespective of the claimants actual entitlement to benefits. Conn, Adkins and Daugherty allegedly received more than $5 million during the nearly eight-year scheme.
According to the indictment, Conn is an attorney whose firm in Floyd County has focused for the past 20 years primarily on representing individuals seeking Social Security disability benefits; Adkins is a clinical psychologist who performed medical evaluations for Conn from 2004 through 2011; and Daugherty is a former SSA administrative law judge who began working with the SSA in 1990 and was assigned to the Office of Disability and Adjudication Review hearing office in Huntington, West Virginia, which maintained a satellite office in Prestonsburg, Kentucky, and handled the claims of Kentucky claimants who requested hearings. Daugherty, who retired in July 2011, was responsible for deciding whether claimants were disabled and entitled to benefits.
As part of the scheme, Conn allegedly filed disability applications with the Prestonsburg Field Office, irrespective of the claimants residence in an effort to ultimately bring the cases before the Huntington Hearing Office, where Daugherty either self-assigned or directed others to assign those cases to himself. Daugherty allegedly solicited Conn to submit falsified medical evidence so that Daugherty could issue fully favorable decisions. Adkins and others performed pretextual physical and mental evaluations on claimants, the indictment alleges. They routinely prepared and signed evaluation reports indicating that claimants had limitations considered disabling by the SSA, irrespective of claimants actual physical or mental conditions, according to the indictment.
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Retired Judge, Attorney and Psychologist Indicted in $600 Million Social Security Fraud Scheme (Original Post)
nitpicker
Apr 2016
OP
Orrex
(63,213 posts)1. It was probably a rounding error
Who among us hasn't made a six decimal place mistake now and then?