Social Security Fraud Lands Detroit Man, 80, In Prison

DETROIT, MI — Otis Wilder, an 80-year-old Detroit man who walks with a cane and has chronic health problems, will go to jail for a year and a day after he was unable to convince a federal court judge that he believed $265,000 in Social Security benefits mistakenly deposited in his late mother’s bank account were his inheritance.

Wilder’s mother died in 1989, but the Social Security payments never stopped. Normally, when a Social Security recipient dies, the individual’s family or the funeral home notify the Social Security Administration, or the account is flagged through state reporting systems. But that didn’t happen in the death of Iotis Wilder, who was drawing her late husband’s Social Security benefits.

U.S. District Judge Victoria Roberts didn’t believe Otis Wilder’s story, and said the fact that it took 24 years for the government to realize its error doesn’t let him off the hook, the Associated Press reported.

“He was perfectly aware of what he was doing,” Roberts said of Wilder’s use of the Social Security money. “This theft did not represent a lapse in judgment.”

Wilder may be eligible for release from prison in less than a year with good behavior credits.

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