The findings mark the culmination of a two-year investigation into one of the nation’s largest fraud rings involving Social Security Administration (SSA) disability benefits. The Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs ordered the probe after a mainstream newspaper published a story about the unscrupulous relationship between a West Virginia judge and a lawyer dedicated exclusively to landing clients on the SSA’s disability rolls.
Besides detailing the inappropriate conduct and collusion between a law firm, judges and doctors involved in the process of approving Social Security benefits, the report outlines the inept agency oversight that allowed the misconduct to take place for years, says the U.S. Senator who led the investigation, Tom Coburn. The Oklahoma Republican is also a medical doctor who joined forces with a bipartisan group of lawmakers to investigate this unbelievable scandal.
“What is also outrageous, as this report details, is how well-heeled and well-connected lawyers, doctors, and judges have gamed the system for their own benefit,” Coburn said. “Every bogus claim made on behalf of someone who is not truly disabled robs taxpayers and denies or delays benefits for someone who is truly disabled. This is an enormous and urgent problem that should demand our immediate attention.”
The crooked judges, lawyers and doctors used manufactured medical evidence to put hundreds of claimants on the government’s disability rolls and they raked in millions of dollars for their work. One law firm got $4.5 million in fees from the SSA involving cases heard by one of the shady judges highlighted in the report. That particular judge, who is now retired, awarded more than $2.5 billion in benefits to 8,413 individuals during a period that didn’t quite reach seven years. That translates into an unheard of 1,200 cases per year, investigators found.
The attorney who was the focus of the investigation made a killing, according to the report, which says he was the third highest-paid disability lawyer in the country. When the feds starting poking around the lawyer destroyed more than 26,000 pounds of documents, investigators say. That’s equivalent to 2.6 million sheets of paper. Employees of the law firm confirmed that all hard copies of the disability lists as well as computer hard drives were ordered destroyed by management.
This is hardly the first time we hear about a scam involving the government’s out-of-control disability program.
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