Prosecutors: California Man Claimed $830K in Mom’s Benefits for 30 Years After Her Death

A California man allegedly took over $830,000 in his mother’s social security payments and veteran benefits for more than 30 years after her death.

Sixty-five-year-old Donald Felix Zampach of Poway pleaded guilty in San Diego federal court on Tuesday when social security fraud and money laundering charges were leveled against him, the San Diego Union-Tribune reported.

In a news release Tuesday, the United States Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of California detailed the case, noting the benefits should have ceased upon the woman’s death:

According to his plea agreement, Zampach’s mother died in Japan in 1990, and at the time of her death she was receiving a widow’s pension from the Social Security Administration and an annuity from the Department of Defense Finance Accounting Service. Just before his mother’s death, Zampach fraudulently conveyed her Poway home and filed for Chapter 7 personal bankruptcy, disclosing neither his ownership of the Poway home nor the government benefits payments he was receiving. After his mother’s death, Zampach maintained her bank accounts, forged her signature on certificates of eligibility to keep her government benefits in pay, and filed forged federal income tax returns, posing as his mother, for over two decades.

He admitted that between November 1990 and September 2022, he received approximately $830,238 in funds meant to go to his mother.

He also said he used her identity to fraudulently open credit accounts with multiple financial institutions, which drained them of over $28,000.

Zampach apparently laundered the money to pay the mortgage on his home “in order to conceal both his ownership of the Poway home and the fact that the money he used constituted criminal proceeds of his fraud,” the attorney’s office said.

According to the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s website, “Money laundering facilitates a broad range of serious underlying criminal offenses and ultimately threatens the integrity of the financial system.”

The Union-Tribune report said as part of the man’s plea agreement, he agreed to forfeit his home to pay back the funds.

“This crime is believed to be the longest-running and largest fraud of its kind in this district,” U.S. Attorney Randy Grossman explained, later adding, “For his deceit, he will face justice.”

Officials released Zampach on bond, and he is scheduled to go before a judge for sentencing in September.

A similar case happened when a woman, identified as 61-year-old Crystal Deveaux of Eastover, South Carolina, was sentenced to 15 months in prison for stealing more than $250,000, WLTX reported in September.

She reportedly stole the money through social security and Medicare funds on behalf of her deceased grandmother:

“Deveaux failed to notify the Social Security Administration of her grandmother’s death and continued to cash and deposit her checks while acting as her grandmother’s representative,” a reporter for the outlet said.