Two metro Atlanta men were sentenced for posing as their dead parents and stealing $500,000 of taxpayer money, federal prosecutors announced Tuesday.
Corry Sandlin of Marietta and John W. Jackson Jr. of Decatur lied to Social Security workers about how their parents died, the agency said in a news release.
"Both defendants got away with their lies for years, stealing large sums of taxpayer dollars," said federal prosecutor John Horn. "Theft like this directly impacts others who receive these types of benefits."
Sandlin, 68, has to pay back the $254,965 he stole and was sentenced to a year and three months in prison.
His mother died in 2004, but Sandlin never told the Social Security Administration and submitted 11 annual applications to receive benefits.
Jackson, 70, was ordered to give back $241,171 and sentenced to 10 months.
His father died in 1980, but the agency continued to pay his retirement benefits until 2014.
"When initially questioned in 2015 by Social Security agents about his father's whereabouts, Jackson told the agents his father had run away with a younger woman a year prior and he did not know where his father was," the agency wrote.
But they interviewed another family member and realized that the father had died decades earlier.
Both men will have three years of parole.
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