BURLINGTON — An Iowa woman has pleaded guilty to illegally collecting hundreds of thousands of dollars from Social Security checks intended for her mother, a Brattleboro resident who died in 1994.
Ella Mae Woods entered the guilty plea Friday to a single wire fraud charge during a hearing in U.S. District Court in Burlington. Sentencing is scheduled for Aug. 19.
The case had been set for trial next month.
Judge Christina Reiss ordered Woods detained pending the sentencing hearing, citing her lack of permanent housing. Woods had been living in Waterloo, Iowa, prior to her arrest in the case in 2023.
Woods, who used a walker to enter the courtroom and wore headphones to hear the judge, had to pause several times to ask her attorney to explain elements of the proceeding.
According to charging documents, Woods’ mother, Jeannette Styles, was living in Brattleboro when she died in 1994. At the time of her death, the filings stated, Styles had been receiving $679 a month in Social Security payments.
The Social Security Administration continued to make the monthly payments, which increased over time to $1,280, for nearly three decades, according to court filings. The agency learned of Styles’ death in 2022.
Court records do not provide any explanation of why it took the Social Security Administration so many years to learn of Styles’ death.
In total, court filings showed, the Social Security Administration paid out more than $328,000 after Styles’ death, in part by sending them to a joint bank account Woods had set up in her name and her mother’s by forging her mother’s signature.
Woods then used those Social Security funds for “her own benefit and enjoyment,” the documents stated.
Woods moved over the years and was questioned during an investigation into the matter in 2022 by federal agents in Iowa, records filed in the case showed.
“When interviewed by SSA agents,” the filing stated, “the defendant acknowledged receiving and spending the money and did not express contrition.”
The sentence Woods faces under the plea deal with prosecutors remains unclear. The judge told Woods during the hearing that the sentence will take into account the federal advisory sentencing guidelines.
Michael Desautels, a public defender representing Woods, said during the hearing he expected the range to be somewhere between 18 to 24 months to serve in prison.
Read the story on VTDigger here: Iowa woman pleads guilty after banking more than $328,000 in dead mother’s Social Security checks.