A federal grand jury on Wednesday indicted a Vancouver man for allegedly posing as dead children to collect more than $360,000 in government benefits.
According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Washington, Steven Lynn Ross, 67, in 1987 assumed the identities of at least two dead children, killed in the 1950s and 1960s, in order to open Social Security accounts in their names.
One died as a toddler in a car crash and the other at 13 years old in a 1968 plane crash, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
Ross, an engineer employed with different technology manufacturing companies in Vancouver, used the identities to obtain driver’s licenses, bank accounts and passports in different names, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
In 2001, he started collecting disability benefits using his real name, stating that he was too ill to work. However, prosecutors say he continued working under one of his assumed identities and collected more than $360,000 in disability payments through the scheme, despite not counting as disabled.
The state Department of Licensing was tipped off when facial recognition software found Ross’ image on more than one driver’s license. The case was turned over to the Social Security Office of the Inspector General and the State Department Diplomatic Security Service, the latter of which works to combat visa and passport fraud, among other duties.
The State Department Diplomatic Security Service found Ross had obtained passports in his own name and the names of the two dead children. Also, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office, he traveled out of the country 22 times between 1998 and 2011 with one of the stolen identities, even as he traveled internationally with his real name and passport.
Ross is charged with two counts of wire fraud, five counts of theft of public funds, one count of access device fraud and one count of aggravated identity theft.
Authorities arrested Ross earlier this month, and he’ll be arraigned in Tacoma on Oct. 29.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office said wire fraud is punishable by up to 20 years in prison, and the other federal crimes punishable by up to 10 years in prison. Aggravated identity theft is punishable by a mandatory two-year term to run consecutive to any sentence imposed on the other counts.
