A California man pleaded guilty last week to hiding his mother’s death from the federal authorities for over 30 years, collecting more than $800,000 in benefits under her name.
Donald Felix Zampach, 65, pleaded guilty to one count of money laundering and one count of Social Security fraud, according to the Justice Department.
“This crime is believed to be the longest-running and largest fraud of its kind in this district,” US Attorney Randy Grossman said in a statement. “This defendant didn’t just passively collect checks mailed to his deceased mother. This was an elaborate fraud spanning more than three decades that required aggressive action and deceit to maintain the ruse.”
All told, beginning in 1990, the Poway man collected $830,238.
He could face up to 25 years in prison, though US sentencing guidelines suggest it will more likely be a sentence of 30 to 37 months.
“He is overwhelmed with regret,” Knut Johnson, Zampach’s lawyer, told The New York Times.
As part of his plea deal, Zampach will forfeit the benefit, pay restitution to various lenders, and turn over the home he took possession of in his mother’s name.
The benefits scheme was an elaborate one, according to the DoJ.
When Zampach’s mother was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, she left the US and returned to her native Japan, where she died in 1990 at age 61.
Her son notified the US embassy in Tokyo of the death, but admitted to leaving blank a box for her Social Security number to avoid the government being aware of her passing, and he repeated this omission on forms for burial permits.
Zampach kept up this ruse until September 2022, collecting his mother’s Social Security checks and payments from the Defense Finance Accounting Service, which pays survivors of military veterans.
An audit of those over age 90 who hadn’t used their Medicare benefits helped reveal the California man’s scheme.
This sort of fraud has happened in the past.
In 2018, a Mexican man pleaded guilty to defrauding the government for even longer, spending 37 years collecting nearly $361,000 in government benefits after assuming the identity of a US citizen, according to The San Diego Union Tribune.
In 2015, Dutch police learned that a man kept his dead mother’s body hidden for over two years and continued collecting her pension and social assistance payments. He was later caught and forced to repay 40,000 euros, according to 1 Limburg.
