WHAT HEELS!: Low-Functioning Grifters
Rosie Marie Costello, 46, and her son, Pete, 28, of Vancouver, WA, have been charged with a 20-year conspiracy to defraud the government and Social Security fraud by claiming the man was retarded. The evidence reviewed by Magistrate Judge Karen Strombom included one video of Pete Costello in which he allegedly makes a show of acting mentally impaired during an interview with Social Security personnel, and one video in which he is fighting a traffic ticket in court. The Magistrate ordered the pair to be held in federal custody until their trial in February.
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February 6, 2007
The Stiletto wrote:
In another Social Security scam, after Larry McWilliams died in 1997 of natural causes his wife, Betty Joanne McWilliams, 59, burned his body to hide his death, then collected his Social Security disability checks for the next nine years – pocketing as much as $133,000. The Missouri man’s son Kris, 36, and daughter Kimberly Ferguson, 39, were also in on the fraud. All three pleaded guilty to embezzlement in U.S. District Court in St. Louis and are scheduled to be back in court February 27 for sentencing. U.S. Attorney Catherine Hanaway charged that the three ate dinner while ...
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