A 65-year-old Searcy woman who cashed her deceased mother's Social Security checks for 29 years, never telling the government that her mother died, was ordered to pay back the $235,404.40 in monthly increments.
"It's a big pile of money, so you're probably going to be paying on it for the rest of your life," U.S. District Judge D. Price Marshall Jr. told Judy Carol Johnson as she stood before him Tuesday in his Little Rock courtroom next to defense attorney Nicole Lybrand of the federal public defender's office.
Johnson also was sentenced to five years' probation and was ordered to perform 100 hours of community service work for each of the first three years.
In addition to the restitution, probation and community service work, Johnson had faced a potential prison sentence of 12 to 18 months and a fine of $3,000 to $30,000 under federal sentencing guidelines. But federal prosecutors joined Lybrand in asking for a probationary sentence so Johnson can work and begin paying back the money at a rate of 10 percent of her monthly gross income.
Another factor in Marshall's decision to sentence Johnson below the penalty range suggested by the guidelines is the failing health of her 75-year-old husband, who is in the early stages of dementia and said in a video recorded for the sentencing hearing that he relies on her for nearly everything. He said she prepares meals for him and their grandsons, does all the grocery shopping, cleaning and household paperwork, and ensures he takes his medicine at the right time and at the correct dosage.
"You can't buy this. You cannot hire it. You can't teach it," he said, noting that she is his third wife but "the first one that ever loved me."
In the video, a doctor described the importance of having caregivers for dementia patients and noted that the caregivers themselves often are worn down by the demands of their duties.
Lybrand told the judge that since September, Johnson has contributed 40 hours of volunteer work for a domestic-violence program, and suggested that she be allowed to serve the community service component of her probation by continuing those efforts, at the request of the program organizers.
It was Johnson's own involvement in an abusive relationship at the time of her mother's death that prompted her to pocket the Social Security funds, Lybrand said, noting that she wanted to accumulate extra money so she could leave.
Lybrand also noted that although Johnson has been suspended from Wal-Mart -- where she has worked for more than 20 years -- since she pleaded guilty in June to a charge of theft of government funds, the company agreed to let her return to work if she received a probationary sentence instead of being sent to prison.
Marshall told Johnson that she must continue to work somewhere to comply with the terms of her probation.
Until her arrest in 2014, Johnson had never been charged with a crime. She was indicted Jan. 6, several months after she confessed that she had forged her mother's signature on documents to keep receiving the funds. Johnson also admitted to investigators with the Office of Inspector General for the Social Security Administration that she had penned a handwritten response to a letter the agency sent her deceased mother, Betty Lee, in September 2013.
The letter asked Lee to contact the agency for a periodic review of benefits. In the reply, Johnson pretended to be her mother and said she was dying of throat cancer that had moved into the brain. The benefits were suspended the next month.
At the time of her death on Aug. 18, 1984, Lee was receiving Social Security retirement and widow benefits. The benefits continued to be deposited into her Searcy bank account through December 2013.
Metro on 11/06/2015