Pa. Woman Pleads Guilty To Collecting Dad’s Social Security After He Died

She first told them "he was visiting family in the Catskills," Assistant U.S. Attorney Paul Sellers said.

Barber's father, in fact, had been dead for more than 12 years, since December 2006.

And after his death, according to the investigators, Barber continued to collect her father's Social Security disability insurance benefits. She had been his designated payee when he was alive, but never told the Social Security administration that he had died.

The total amount taken, between Jan. 1, 2007, and Aug. 2, 2019, was $127,636, according to the federal indictment.

Barber, 50, pleaded guilty on Friday in U.S. District Court in Erie to one count of theft of government property.

U.S. District Judge Susan Paradise Baxter accepted the plea at a virtual hearing and set the sentencing for May 20. Barber is free on an unsecured bond of $25,000.

Barber faces a maximum sentence of 10 years in federal prison, though the sentence is likely to be far less under the federal sentencing guidelines.

On the same day Barber was indicted, the Pittsburgh-based U.S. Attorney's Office for the Western District of Pennsylvania, which includes Erie, said four other people had also been indicted on charges that they received Social Security benefits after the legal recipients had died.