Friday, September 03, 1999
Man gets prison for benefits theft
Father, pension, Social Security money missing
BY BEN L. KAUFMAN
The Cincinnati Enquirer
A Kennedy Heights resident was sentenced to 27 months in prison Thursday and ordered to pay $129,874 in restitution for cashing his missing father's monthly Social Security checks.
U.S. District Judge S. Arthur Spiegel gave Gary Adams, 51, of Wyatt Avenue, three weeks to sort out his affairs and report to prison.
Mr. Adams' father, Walter Dunson, would have been 100 in July.
In 1980, Mr. Dunson dropped from sight, but his pension and Social Security checks kept coming.
After three visits that year to University Hospital for a mild stroke, he saw no doctor, had no prescriptions filled, and had no bank account, driver's license, library card or voting record.
Cincinnati police list Mr. Dunson as a missing person, but investigators say they think he's been dead a long time.
In June 1998, a Social Security field representative wrote to Mr. Adams, saying he wanted to meet him to verify that beneficiaries who were about to turn 98 or 99 were still alive.
Four days after the letter was mailed, Mr. Adams reported his father disappeared after they shopped at Findlay Market in Over-the-Rhine.
Thirty members of a police recruit class and 15 other officers canvassed the neighborhood but found no sign of Mr. Adams' father.
Mr. Adams was convicted in May of 25 counts of theft of government funds but acquitted on 25 counts of forgery.
Assistant U.S. Attorney John DiPuccio conceded the evidence was less than clear regarding signatures on the checks, but Thursday's sentence was as severe under federal guidelines as it would have been had he won convictions on all counts.
Mr. DiPuccio said none of the money was recovered. “He probably spent it month by month as it came in,” he said.
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