Waterloo Woman Going to Federal Prison for Defrauding Social Security Administration for More Than Twenty Years

A woman who concealed her ineligibility for Social Security benefits for twenty-two years was sentenced on September 23, 2025, to more than one year in federal prison.

Penny Linn Teel, age 60, from Waterloo, Iowa, received the prison term after an April 23, 2025 guilty plea to one count of theft of government property.

In a plea agreement, Teel admitted that she began receiving insurance benefits from the Social Security Administration in 1992 after her husband passed away.  In 2002, Teel married again.  She did not report or disclose her marriage to the Social Security Administration.  In 2022 and 2023, Teel filled out applications for Social Security benefits for her husband.  She falsely indicated in those applications that he was not married.  Information from sentencing showed that, when Teel was subsequently confronted by law enforcement agents, she made additional false statements about her marriage and whether she told the Social Security Administration that she was married.  

Teel was sentenced in Cedar Rapids by United States District Court Chief Judge C.J. Williams.  Teel was sentenced to 21 months’ imprisonment.  She was ordered to make $297,281 in restitution to the Social Security Administration.  She must also serve a three-year term of supervised release after the prison term.  There is no parole in the federal system.

Teel was released on the bond previously set and is to surrender to the Bureau of Prisons on a date yet to be set.

The case was prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorney Kyndra Lundquist and investigated by the Social Security Administration Office of Inspector General.  

Court file information at https://ecf.iand.uscourts.gov/cgi-bin/login.pl.

The case file number is 24-CR-2042.

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