MN Woman Fooled Social Security By Posing As Her Dead Mom For 25 Years, Sentenced To Jail

MINNEAPOLIS, MN — A Minnesota woman has been sentenced to a year and a day in prison for stealing her deceased mother’s Social Security benefits over a 25-year period, federal prosecutors said.

Mavious Redmond, 54, of Austin, Minnesota, "was brazen and shameless,” said Acting U.S. Attorney Joseph H. Thompson.

"For 25 years, she posed as her dead mother to steal more than $360,000 in Social Security benefits. This wasn’t free money. It was taxpayer money, stolen from a program built on the hard work of Minnesotans who paid in every paycheck."

According to court documents, beginning in 1999 and continuing through June 2024, Redmond devised and carried out a scheme to collect her mother’s Social Security Retirement Insurance Benefits following her death. In total, she fraudulently obtained $360,627.

In 1999, shortly after her mother died, Redmond contacted the Social Security Administration (SSA) and asked hypothetically what she should do if her mother had passed away. The SSA told her she would need to report the death so the benefits could be terminated. Instead, prosecutors said, Redmond chose to conceal her mother’s death and began collecting the payments.

Court records state that Redmond forged her mother’s signature, used her mother’s personal information, and repeatedly posed as her mother both over the phone and in person. She also changed benefit addresses to match her own.

In one instance, on June 4, 2024, Redmond visited a Social Security office in person while impersonating her deceased mother. She submitted a fraudulent SS-5 Application for a Social Security card using her mother’s name, birthdate, and Social Security number, prosecutors said.

Her actions even misled the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), which issued $3,200 in COVID-19 Economic Impact Payments under her mother’s name. Redmond accessed and used those funds, according to court filings.

In handing down the sentence, U.S. District Judge Nancy E. Brasel cited the length of the fraud and the fact that Redmond impersonated her deceased mother in front of multiple federal agencies as aggravating factors.