How One Lawyer Bilked Social Security for Hundreds of
Clients ... and over 4MIL in taxpayers funds
How one lawyer bilked Social Security for hundreds of clients: report
He earned more than $4 million in taxpayer-funded fees
By Stephen Dinan
The Senate’s chief investigative committee on Monday will release a report laying out a major scheme to bilk Social Security’s disability system, accusing a small-town Kentucky lawyer of colluding with a judge to approve bogus cases, in a scheme that appears to expose major holes in how Social Security polices itself.
In a detailed report being released Monday in conjunction with a hearing on the subject, the investigators lay out a stunning scheme that involved the lawyer, Eric C. Conn, Administrative Law Judge David B. Daugherty, dishonest doctors, disposable phones, shredded documents and millions of dollars in profits — taken straight from taxpayers through the Social Security system.
“Mr. Conn and Judge Daugherty had collaborated on a scheme that enabled the judge to approve, in assembly-line fashion, hundreds of clients for disability benefits using manufactured medical evidence,” the investigators concluded.
The Social Security disability system has come under increasing scrutiny as the number of persons earning disability has jumped faster than normal population and workforce growth, to reach 8.8 million beneficiaries in 2012.
And several high-profile disability fraud cases have contributed to concerns.
In August, federal authorities announced they had arrested 75 people in Puerto Rico on charges of bilking the disability system of millions of dollars. The authorities used a sting operation to nail the fraud ring.
Mr. Conn's case came to the attention of investigators after a 2011 Wall Street Journal article identified Judge Daugherty as having a prolific docket for disability cases, and approving an extraordinarily high number of them.
Both the lawyer and the judge are slated to appear before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee on Monday to answer questions raised by the report.
http://www.rumormillnews.com/cgi-bin/forum.cgi?read=289048
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