A Woodville woman has been ordered to pay over $100,000 in restitution after being being sentenced for Social Security fraud, health care fraud, and theft of public money.
U.S. District Judge ordered 51-year-old Rella Austin-Kimball to pay a total of $103,596.91 in restitution — consisting of $78,858.25 to the Social Security Administration (SSA), and $4,550.66 for the MaineCare program, and $20,188 for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).
Austin-Kimball was also sentenced to serve three years of probation.
According to court records, between January 2005 and March 2021, Austin-Kimball lied to the SSA about her husband being in her household, and failed to report her receipt of alimony payments following her divorce in order to appear eligible for Supplemental Security Income (SSI) payments.
Austin-Kimball also hid her husband’s presence from the Maine Department of Health and Human Services from January 2005 to July 2017, in order to receive MaineCare and SNAP benefits, according to court records.
In multiple benefit eligibility reviews, Austin-Kimball falsely represented to the SSA and ME/DHHS that she and her husband had separated in January 2005 and had lived separately since that time. Following her divorce, she failed to disclose her receipt of alimony payments during eligibility reviews.
U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Maine
The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Maine say Austin-Kimball fraudulently obtained the benefits on behalf of herself and her then-minor child.
<span class="dsq-postid" data-dsqidentifier="24504 https://www.themainewire.com/?p=24504">5 Comments
Why, with the large amount of government employees in the State of Maine, not able to connect the dots with the court system. Divorces are public knowledge. Just search the courts and connect the dots. Yes, she is guilty and should receive this and probably more sentencing. Perhaps 3 years of community service! However with technology today, state government should be tracking this.
A picture of this individual might be useful.
O. M. G.!!! OK, the article’s a bit shy of details, but if true, this horrible mom, over 16 years (why didn’t the bean-counters catch on sooner, I wonder?) STOLE slightly over $6,800 per year from the taxpayers of Maine! That’s about what it cost me to heat my house last year! (Is that what she spent the money on, or was she driving around in a late-model Cadillac?) Why did it take 16 years for them to catch her??? How much do the taxpayers of Maine spend, per year, hiring these bean-counters in the first place? Might it not be cheaper to just fire all the bean-counters & means-testers & just hand cash to the poor? IMHO, someone ought to find out.
This not the only one, is it?
Of all the low-down, nasty things the U.S. gov’t has done, surely making welfare conditional upon splitting up marriages is one of the nastiest.