What Are The Disability Fraud Penalties

The Social Security Administration (SSA) has tried to make changes in their legal outlines in regards to disabilities in an effort to prevent disability fraud from occurring. If a criminal is prosecuted of such crimes, they can succumb to a variety of penalties. One penalty usually given out for the crime of disability insurance fraud is restitution. Restitution is when a court orders that the criminal be required to pay back the amount of benefits that were collected while committing disability insurance fraud. Depending on the severity of the crime, additional fines may be added. When disability insurance fraud is carried out that is considered to be especially heinous, the criminal in question may also be sentenced to probation, community service, or even jail time. Jail time can include up to thirty years in a state penitentiary. This is especially true if there is an excessive financial amount accrued or, if somehow, it involves taking advantage of a child or the elderly. Reports have shown that the SSA has tried to step up penalties by laying out certain guidelines and enforcing more concrete laws when it comes to filing false statements within disability paperwork. The penalties given out for such offenses are stated as: a criminal committing a first offense of filing false statements while filing for disability is to be sentenced to six months of loss of disability payments, a second offense will result in twelve months, and a third offense will result in twenty four months. In additions to losing the ability to collect benefits for a long period of time, civil and criminal courts may also issue additional penalties. In addition to fines and restitution, the criminal prosecuted may also be ordered to pay a twenty-five to thirty percent penalty fee from the amount of over-payments they received. In most cases of disability insurance fraud where penalties are issued in the form of prison sentence and fines, these sentences are about five years in prison and usually up to about two hundred and fifty thousand dollars in fines.