(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.
Prosecutors say the scheme was so convincing that it fooled multiple federal agencies. The Internal Revenue Service, believing Redmond’s mother was still alive, distributed $3,200 in COVID-19 Economic Impact Payments to the deceased woman’s bank account, which Redmond took for her own use. In one of her boldest acts, on June 4th, 2024, Redmond pretended to be her mom and submitted a fraudulent Social Security application in person at an SSA office.
Acting U.S. Attorney Joseph H. Thompson called the scheme “brazen and shamless,” noting, “Cases like this are part of the broader fraud crisis gripping our state, where too many see taxpayer programs as their own personal piggy banks. We will not let it stand. We will keep bringing prosecutions until every fraudster in Minnesota understands there is a price for stealing from the taxpayers.”
The investigation was conducted by the Social Security Administration’s Office of Inspector General and the IRS.
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