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Janis Miller -- who is now 77 years old -- even went as far as trying to impersonate her aunt in a phone conversation with a Social Security worker, U.S. Attorney Philip R. Sellinger said.
However, she couldn’t come up with her aunt’s exact birthdate – just an approximation, he said.
The embezzlement scheme came apart after that.
Miller was brought before a federal judge in Newark on Thursday, Dec. 21, and was released on a $100,000 unsecured bond, Sellinger said. The government has charged her with wire fraud, he said.
Unaware of Miller’s aunt’s death in 1998, the federal Social Security Administration (SSA) and U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) continued to send retirement and survivor benefits to the late woman’s bank account, the U.S. attorney said.
Miller raked it in using a debit card, making cash withdrawals and forging checks, Sellinger said.
She’d spent all of it by the time the funds were finally cut off – 25 years after the thefts began, he said.
Sellinger credited special agents of the inspector general’s offices of the federal Social Security Administration and the U.S. Office of Personnel Management with the investigation leading to the charges.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Sam Thypin-Bermeo of Sellinger’s General Crimes Unit in Newark is handling the case for the government.
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