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4 Admissions of Social Security Fraud in April Alone Show Waste and Abuse Are Real


By: Beth Brelje | April 23, 2025

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2025/04/23/4-admissions-of-social-security-fraud-in-april-alone-show-waste-and-abuse-are-real/

While media cries about Trump eradicating fraud, and protesters punish Musk over DOGE findings, Social Security cons are plentiful.

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When Elon Musk announced in February that there were 10 million Social Security numbers belonging to holders apparently aged 120 years and older, instead of acknowledging the great potential for fraudulent activity, the corporate media downplayed the concerns. They insisted that Social Security fraud is “not very common” and maligned the Trump administration’s efforts to purge the federal government of waste and abuse. However, multiple instances of Social Security fraud confirmed in April alone are a reminder that the system has enabled abuse for years.

In late March, DOGE announced that, following a “major cleanup” of records, 9.9 million number holders listed with ages 120 years and older “have now been marked deceased.” (While people do live past 100, the oldest person who ever lived in modern times was Jeanne Louise Calment, of France, who died in 1997 at 122 years old.)

Corporate media and so-called experts have claimed that the listed ages of these centenarian number holders may be the result of “coding quirks” in the system and that efforts to mark these number holders as deceased could lead to more errors. But this does not change the fact that unused Social Security numbers marked as live are ripe for fraud.

What can you do with a spare Social Security number? You could register to vote again or sign up for social welfare, like housing, health insurance, cash assistance, and SNAP. Noncitizens can get a job, and of course, collect Social Security retirement or disability benefits.

Last month, a White House fact sheet, citing an inspector general report from 2024, noted how “The Social Security Administration made an estimated $72 billion in improper payments between 2015 and 2022.”

Social Security Fraud Is Alive And Well

Last week, Wendy Stone of Rochester, New York, pleaded guilty to “conversion/unlawful conveyance of government money, which carries a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine,” according to U.S. Attorney Michael DiGiacomo’s office.

Back in 2022, Stone went to the home of an acquaintance and found that person had died a few days earlier. Stone didn’t report the death to authorities. Instead, she moved the body to the basement of the home, stuffed it in a storage bin, and covered it in bleach, occasionally topping off the bleach to keep the body covered. It remained there from December 2022 to September 2023, the DOJ release explains. Stone, 63, “improperly collected” $7,900 of the victim’s Supplemental Security Income money, which is administered by the Social Security Administration, and used the victim’s Social Security number “to activate a new debit card.” Stone also later falsely claimed the victim lived with her to receive $1,070 in SNAP benefits, according to the release.

On April 9, Mavious Redmond of Austin, Minnesota, pleaded guilty to committing Social Security fraud for 25 years, roughly half her life. Redmond, 54, “collected more than $360,000 in Social Security payments intended for her mother,” who died in 1999, the DOJ said in an April 14 release.

“On multiple occasions, Redmond impersonated her deceased mother to keep her fraud scheme going,” reads the statement from Acting U.S. Attorney Lisa D. Kirkpatrick’s office. “For example, on June 4, 2024, Redmond personally visited the SSA office, posing as her deceased mother, and submitted a fraudulent SS-5 Application for Social Security Form using her mother’s name, date of birth, Social Security number, and forging her deceased mother’s signature.”

Deborah Bailey, 68, from Piscataway, New Jersey, pleaded guilty to theft of public money after claiming her dead mother’s Social Security retirement money for eight years after her death. After Bailey’s mom died in 2016, she didn’t tell the Social Security Administration, and an investigation revealed she withdrew more than $150,000 “in retirement benefits” from her mom’s bank account between 2016 and 2024. She faces sentencing in August, according to a DOJ release from U.S. Attorney Alina Habba’s Office.

Reynaldo Martinez of Pawtucket, Rhode Island, admitted to getting his mitts on 40 SNAP cards using “stolen identities and stolen or fraudulent Social Security numbers.”

“Court documents reflect that Martinez appeared in person at multiple Rhode Island Department of Human Services offices and filed applications for SNAP benefits,” according to a DOJ release from April 2. “He did this by presenting fraudulent drivers’ licenses in various names but depicting his own photograph, and using Social Security numbers assigned to others, including that of a deceased individual, living adult citizens, and at least one juvenile.”

He admitted to receiving more than $33,000 in SNAP free food benefits. Martinez also admitted to cashing “altered” U.S. Treasury checks, which can be tax refunds, Social Security, or other benefits. Martinez pleaded guilty and will be sentenced in July, according to the DOJ. He was arrested and convicted multiple times in the past on other fraud and criminal charges, “dating back to 2012.”

Still, the desperate media really want the Trump administration to stop looking for fraud.

Last week, President Trump signed a memorandum aimed at “preventing illegal aliens from obtaining Social Security Act benefits.” Without missing a beat, Axios’ Jason Lalljee wrote under the headline: “Trump aids Musk’s Social Security fraud hunt, despite lack of evidence.”

[READ: Five Ways Non-Citizens With Social Security Numbers Can Scam America]

But while the media cry about Trump eradicating fraud, and protesters key Teslas to punish Musk over DOGE findings, there are plentiful examples of Social Security fraud. The above are just a few admissions from April alone.   

Not every mismarked 150-year-old Social Security number is connected to fraud, but for those and others that are, one person can bleed years of funding from the program, threatening its solvency and the security of those who truly need it.   

Beth Brelje is an elections correspondent for The Federalist. She is an award-winning investigative journalist with decades of media experience.

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FBI Told Delaware U.S. Attorney It Had Already Partially Corroborated Biden Bribery Claims, Source Says


BY: MARGOT CLEVELAND | JULY 24, 2023

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2023/07/24/fbi-told-delaware-u-s-attorney-it-had-already-partially-corroborated-biden-bribery-claims-source-says/

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When the Pittsburgh FBI office briefed the Delaware U.S. attorney’s office on evidence implicating Hunter and Joe Biden in a bribery scheme, the agents also told the Delaware team they had already corroborated several aspects of the confidential human source’s claims, an individual familiar with the briefing told The Federalist. 

On Thursday, Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, released the FD-1023 summary of a confidential human source’s reporting that the Ukrainian oil and gas company Burisma paid Hunter and Joe Biden each $5 million in bribes so the then-Vice President would “protect” Burisma “from all kinds of problems.” Those bribes were in addition to the more than $4 million in total paid to Hunter Biden and his business partner Devon Archer for sitting on Burisma’s board of directors. 

The Federalist has now learned that the Pittsburgh FBI office had corroborated several details contained in the FD-1023 as part of the intake process that former Attorney General William Barr established before the election under the leadership of the Western District of Pennsylvania’s then-U.S. Attorney Scott Brady. Significantly, in briefing the Delaware U.S. attorney on the results of their office’s screening of evidence related to Ukraine, the Pittsburgh FBI agents told the Delaware office they had corroborated multiple facts included in the FD-1023, an individual with knowledge of the briefing told The Federalist.

Following the late June 2020 interview with the CHS, the Pittsburgh FBI office obtained travel records for the CHS, and those records confirmed the CHS had traveled to the locales detailed in the FD-1023 during the relevant time period. The trips included a late 2015 or early 2016 visit to Kiev, Ukraine; a trip a couple of months later to Vienna, Austria; and travel to London in 2019. 

As The Federalist previously reported, during their briefing of the Delaware U.S. attorney’s office, the Pittsburgh FBI agents said the FD-1023 bore indicia of credibility and that it merited further investigation. The person familiar with that briefing now confirms the agents also informed the Delaware office that the Pittsburgh FBI had corroborated the CHS’s presence in the various cities at the times claimed.

The Federalist has also learned that the CHS’s handler corroborated the CHS’s claim that he had met with Oleksandr Ostapenko. According to the source with knowledge of the matter, the CHS’s handler told Pittsburgh’s FBI agents that the CHS told his handler he had an upcoming meeting with Ostapenko. The CHS’s contemporaneous claim of the planned rendezvous with Ostapenko tracked the timing of one of the visits the CHS claimed in the FD-1023 to have had with Ostapenko. Significantly, the Pittsburgh office briefed the Delaware office on that piece of corroborating evidence that came from the CHS’s handler.

Open-source reporting of Burisma’s purchase of an interest in a North American oil and gas company likewise lined up with the discussions the CHS relayed to the FBI, as summarized in the FD-1023, the individual familiar with the briefing told The Federalist. That the Pittsburgh FBI office not only provided the Delaware office with a summary of the damning FD-1023 and its conclusion that it bore indicia of credibility but also identified several pieces of corroborating evidence is huge because, to date, it appears the Delaware office did nothing to investigate the allegations contained in the FD-1023. 

As Barr previously made clear, the role of the Pittsburgh office was limited to providing a “clearing-house function” for information related to Ukraine to weed out “any potential disinformation.” The purpose of the intake process, Barr stressed, was to “check[] out the source and credibility of evidence before assigning it to one of the ongoing investigations already pending in the Department,” such as the Delaware investigation into Hunter Biden. As such, the Pittsburgh office lacked the authority to subpoena witnesses or records or to use grand jury proceedings to further corroborate the FD-1023. That responsibility fell with the Delaware office.

But not only did the Delaware office apparently ignore the allegations contained in the FD-1023, as well as the corroborating evidence already allegedly accumulated by the Pittsburgh FBI office, but U.S. Attorney David Weiss’s office allegedly secreted the very existence of the FD-1023 from the whistleblowers. Both IRS whistleblowers testified last week that they did not even learn of the existence of the FD-1023 until Barr publicly confirmed he had sent the information to Delaware for further investigation. 

Delaware Assistant U.S. Attorney Lesley Wolf also excluded the IRS agents working the Hunter Biden investigation from the meeting at which the Pittsburgh FBI agents briefed the office on the FD-1023 and the corroborating evidence they had already uncovered. The IRS whistleblowers further testified that portions of Hunter Biden’s laptop were withheld from them and they were explicitly prohibited from taking any investigative steps connected to Joe Biden — or questioning anyone by using Joe Biden’s name, “Dad,” or “the Big Guy.”

Under these circumstances, even if the Delaware U.S. attorney’s office comes forward now to say it did investigate the FD-1023, its belated claim would be meaningless because the individuals with the knowledge and skill necessary to investigate a complex, international money laundering, bribery, and tax fraud scheme were cut out of the process and barred from interviewing the necessary witnesses. 

The Delaware office remains mum, however, not even pretending to have investigated the FD-1023’s allegations. That failure is even more scandalous now that we know Pittsburgh had already corroborated several aspects of the CHS’s reporting and briefed Weiss’s office on the corroborating evidence. 

Yet the Biden White House continues to falsely claim the FD-1023 charges “have been debunked for years.” On the contrary, the only thing debunked to date has been the lies of Biden’s Democrat apologists, such as Ranking Member of the House Oversight Committee Jamie Raskin, who doubled down on his claim that Barr had found the FD-1023 not credible and not meriting further investigation.

Americans now know not only that Raskin and his Democrat colleagues lied, but that President Joe Biden lied — both when he said he knew nothing of his son’s business ventures and in claiming now that the FD-1023 has been debunked.

Margot Cleveland is The Federalist’s senior legal correspondent. She is also a contributor to National Review Online, the Washington Examiner, Aleteia, and Townhall.com, and has been published in the Wall Street Journal and USA Today. Cleveland is a lawyer and a graduate of the Notre Dame Law School, where she earned the Hoynes Prize—the law school’s highest honor. She later served for nearly 25 years as a permanent law clerk for a federal appellate judge on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. Cleveland is a former full-time university faculty member and now teaches as an adjunct from time to time. As a stay-at-home homeschooling mom of a young son with cystic fibrosis, Cleveland frequently writes on cultural issues related to parenting and special-needs children. Cleveland is on Twitter at @ProfMJCleveland. The views expressed here are those of Cleveland in her private capacity.

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