Tahlequah Man Ordered To Return $119,000.00 To Social Security

MUSKOGEE, OKLAHOMA - The United States Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Oklahoma announced that the United States District Court, after a non-jury trial, has entered judgment against JOHN DEFELICE of Tahlequah, Oklahoma, for $119,218.00, which represents a sum of Social Security benefits paid to Janet DeFelice, his mother, who went missing in northern California and has never been found.  On June 1, 2007, Mrs.Defelice wandered off from her son’s home in Templeton, California, in the middle of the night.  After a concerted search by her family and authorities, and the passing of five years, a certificate of death was issued for her by the State of California on June 1, 2012.  During those five years the money was paid into an account jointly owned by Janet DeFelice and her son, John DeFelice, by the Social Security Administration.  The Social Security Administration had not been notified that Mrs.DeFelice’s whereabouts were unknown.

This investigation that lead to this civil prosecution is an example of the work that various federal agencies, such as the Social Security Administration, do to prevent financial loss to the taxpayer through federal programs.  Federal investigative agencies present the results of their efforts to the Department of Justice, usually through the appropriate United States Attorney’s office, to be prosecuted as Affirmative Civil Enforcement (ACE) matters.  This case was a result of that effort to prevent financial loss and was prosecuted by the ACE Unit of the United States Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Oklahoma.

United States Attorney Mark Green stated:  “It is Important that actions like this be brought and tried to the Court, if necessary, so that money mistakenly paid out from government programs such as Social Security is recovered.”

This case was a coordinated effort by the United States Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Oklahoma and the Office of the Inspector General of the United States Social Security Administration.  The lawsuit is captioned United States of America  v. John DeFelice, Case No. CIV-14-415-RAW (E.D. Okla.). Assistant United States Attorney Robert Gay Guthrie represented the United States.