Minnesota woman sentenced for 25-year Social Security scam

A southern Minnesota woman will spend time in federal prison after prosecutors say she posed as her dead mother to claim social security benefits for 25 years.

Mavious Redmond, of Austin, was ordered to spend one year and a day in prison for the scheme, in which she collected over $360,000 in benefits. The 54-year-old will also be put on supervised release after her prison sentence is finished.

“This wasn’t free money. It was taxpayer money, stolen from a program built on the hard work of Minnesotans who paid in every paycheck,” Acting U.S. Attorney Joseph Thompson said. “Cases like this are part of the broader fraud crisis gripping our state, where too many see taxpayer programs as their own personal piggy banks. We will not let it stand. We will keep bringing prosecutions until every fraudster in Minnesota understands there is a price for stealing from the taxpayers.”

Redmond started the scam in 1999, stealing the retirement benefits intended for her deceased mother, court documents state. They add that Redmond specifically reached out to the Social Security Administration to ask what she’d need to do if her mother died, then deliberately avoided following those instructions.

As part of the scam, authorities say Redmond had to pose as her dead mother repeatedly, including by forging her signature and using her mom’s personal information on official forms, updating her address to reflect her own address changes, and acting like her mother both over the phone and in person.
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