Iowa woman sentenced for cashing dead mother’s Social Security checks for nearly 30 years

An Iowa woman has been sentenced to a year in prison for illegally cashing more than $300,000 in Social Security checks intended for her mother, a Brattleboro resident who died in 1994.

Ella Mae Woods, 76, had pleaded guilty in May to a single wire fraud charge in connection with the scheme that spanned nearly three decades, according to court filings.

Woods was sentenced Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Rutland by Judge Mae A. D’Agostino to serve a year and a day in prison and pay restitution of $328,000, according to federal prosecutors.

Woods has been jailed at the Chittenden Regional Correctional Facility in South Burlington since she was found to be in violation of the conditions of her pretrial release in April, federal prosecutors added.

She had been living in Waterloo, Iowa, prior to her arrest in the case in 2023.

Woods’ mother, Jeannette Styles, was living in Brattleboro when she died in 1994, according to court filings. At the time of her death, court records stated, Styles had been receiving $679 a month in Social Security payments.

The Social Security Administration kept making the monthly payments for 28 years, which increased over time to $1,280. The agency ceased payments after learning of Styles’ death in 2022, according to court records.

In total, court filings stated, the Social Security Administration paid out more than $328,000 after Styles’ death. The checks, charging documents stated, were sent to a joint bank account Woods had set up in her and her mother’s names by forging her mother’s signature.

The filings do not provide an explanation of why it took the Social Security Administration so many years to learn of Styles’ death.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Gregory Waples, the prosecutor, wrote in a sentencing document filed ahead of Wednesday’s hearing that it was “unclear” whether the funeral home submitted a death certificate to the Social Security Administration “or otherwise reported Styles’ death.”

Waples also wrote that the Social Security number for Styles listed on the death certificate was incorrect — off by one digit.

The prosecutor wrote in the filing that it was not clear how that error was made and why it was never corrected. He called the actions by Woods of continuing to collect the checks and spend the money a “serious” offense.

“This is the largest SSA fraud case with which I have been involved — by a factor of about three,” Waples wrote in his court filing. “Indeed, it is hard to imagine a more extensive single-claimant fraud case, since this fraud spanned approximately 28 years.”

Waples asked for a sentence for Woods “at or not too far below the bottom” of the advisory federal sentencing guideline in the case of 15 to 21 months in prison.

Michael Desautels, a public defender representing Woods, wrote in his sentencing document that there were several “mitigating factors” related to the conduct of his client. He requested a prison sentence of less than 15 months for Woods.

“She did not overtly make a false application or renew a request for benefits; rather, they

came to her mother and Ms. Woods accepted them,” Desautels wrote, adding, “She did nothing to cause the Social Security Administration to continue to send payments on behalf of her mother after Jeannette Styles died.”

Read the story on VTDigger here: Iowa woman sentenced for cashing dead mother’s Social Security checks for nearly 30 years .