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Social Security Identity Thief Faces Years in Prison


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An Ohio woman has been jailed after stealing the Social Security identity of a dead child and receiving hundreds of thousands of dollars in benefits.

Christina Vaskovsky, a 56-year-old living in Cincinnati, was arrested in November of last year, but had managed to steal thousands before she was finally caught.

Earlier, Vaskovsky was arrested in 2008 after stealing $14,500 from her employer, but she never showed up for her court date, and a warrant was then put out for her arrest.

Vaskovsky started using the stolen identity in 2010, using the personal information of a child who was born in the same year as her but died in 1977.

She accepted a plea bargain with a recommended 12- to 30-month prison sentence, local station WKRC reported. In addition, she will have to pay back $191,000 to a range of government entities, including the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the Social Security Administration (SSA), the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services.

Food stamps
A federal food stamps card on February 10, 2011, in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Social Security numbers can be used to steal benefits ranging from food stamps to Social Security payments. Joe Raedle/Getty Images

Using the false identity, Vaskovsky was able to secure $19,570 in food stamps and clear $128,000 by filing for bankruptcy.

She also received $29,000 in Social Security benefits, $11,600 in unemployment benefits and Supplemental Security Income disability benefits worth $4,833. The Medicare benefits might have been Vaskovsky's heftiest scam, as they ended up costing the government $116,000.

It is unclear exactly how many cases of Social Security identity theft take place in the U.S. each year, but experts estimate more than 50,000 victims lose $200 million annually, said Alex Beene, a financial literacy instructor in Tennessee.

Many other cases have been reported across the country in recent years.

In Alabama, a woman named Deleria Huff pocketed the Social Security benefits meant for her dead mother for 30 years, receiving $337,642 through the fraud.

Huff's crime came to light after a Medicare non-utilization audit indicated her mother may have died. Huff told an SSA representative in 2020 that her mother was still living with her but couldn't speak because of her dementia.

The benefits were suspended and Huff later admitted her mother had died. She is due to be sentenced in July.

Scams frequently target people using dating apps. Identity theft protection brand IDShield discovered in a survey this year that seven out of 10 dating app users had been scammed, and many of those had given out their Social Security numbers to fraudsters.

"While the SSA has been in the constant process of trying to cut down on these cases, it remains a prevalent problem," Beene told Newsweek.

To prevent your own Social Security number from being stolen, you should protect it like your "most prized possession," Beene said. That means never providing it over the phone, text or online in any situation unless it's a proven federal, state or banking entity.

"Even then, it's a good idea to call the entity before following the prompt to enter it," Beene said. "You want to ensure where you're entering the number is both legally needed and the database you're sending it to is secure."

Uncommon Knowledge

Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.

Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.

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