A former engineer employed with technology manufacturing companies in Vancouver was sentenced Monday in federal court to 27 months in prison for posing as dead children to collect more than $360,000 in government benefits.
Steven Lynn Ross, 67, was sentenced in U.S. District Court in Tacoma for a nearly 20-year scheme in which he collected disability benefits under his own identity while working under a false identity, U.S. Attorney Brian T. Moran announced Monday.
Ross pleaded guilty Jan. 15 to theft of public funds and aggravated identity theft, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
He stole a total of $368,458 in government benefits between 2001 and 2017. As early as 1987, he 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 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 he was too ill to work. However, he continued working under one of his assumed identities and collected disability payments through the scheme, despite not counting as disabled, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said.
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 Department of State’s Diplomatic Security Service, the latter of which works to combat visa and passport fraud, among other duties.
The Diplomatic Security Service found Ross had obtained passports in his own name and the names of three dead children. He traveled out of the country 22 times between 1998 and 2011, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office, with one of the stolen identities, even as he traveled with his real name and passport.
At sentencing, U.S. District Judge Benjamin H. Settle also imposed three years of supervised release and a $20,000 fine, saying, “Our government depends on the honesty of its citizens to work. … The victims here are future generations … his daughters and grandchildren will be paying.”
According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Ross is also in the process of paying back the money he stole.
