A Maryland woman who continued to receive her mother's Social Security benefits for 16 years after her mother's death pleaded guilty to theft of government property Thursday.
Yvonne Isadora Whiteman, 69, of Laurel admitted stealing almost $300,000 in social security checks, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office.
Whiteman and her mother had a joint bank account to which the benefits were sent. After her mother moved to Trinidad in the summer of 1997, Whiteman would send the money there until her mother died in October of that year.
After that, the Social Security Administration continued to deposit the monthly benefit, which totaled $299,951 over 16 years.
In 2013, the SSA presumed Whiteman's mother was dead because she had not used Medicare services. Whiteman met with a SSA specialist and turned in a forged a death certificate that said her mother died in October 2013. When Whiteman became aware the specialist would obtain the true death certificate, she confessed that she had lied about her mother’s date of death.
Whiteman faces a maximum of 10 years in prison, and has agreed to pay $299,951 in restitution.
In a similar, unrelated case, Baltimore man Allen Thomas Wilson, 72, pleaded guilty to the same charge Thursday. Wilson spent his dead mother's retirement benefits, totaling $127,000, from the time of her death in 1997 until January 2014, when the benefits were terminated.