KENTUCKY
A federal judge sentenced a former social security administrative law judge Friday to four years in prison for his role in a scheme to fraudulently obtain more than $550 million in federal disability payments from the Social Security Administration for thousands of claimants, according to officials.
U.S. District Judge Danny C. Reeves also ordered David Black Daugherty, 81, to pay restitution of over $93 million to Social Security and Health and Human Services.
Daugherty plead guilty in May 2017 to two counts of receiving illegal gratuities.
According to his guilty plea, beginning in 2004, Daugherty, as a judge assigned to the Social Security Administration’s Huntington, W. Va., hearing office, sought out pending disability cases in which Kentucky attorney Eric Christopher Conn represented claimants and reassigned those cases to himself.
Daugherty then contacted Conn and identified the cases he intended to decide the following month and further solicited Conn to provide medical documentation supporting either physical or mental disability determinations.
Without exception, Daugherty awarded disability benefits to individuals represented by Conn – in some instances, without first holding a hearing, officials said.
As a result of Daugherty’s awarding disability benefits to claimants represented by Conn, Conn paid Daugherty an average of approximately $8,000 per month in cash, until approximately April 2011.
All told, Daugherty received more than $609,000 in cash from Conn for deciding approximately 3,149 cases, officials said.
As a result of the scheme, Conn, Daugherty, and their co-conspirators obligated Social Security to pay more than $550 million in lifetime benefits to claimants based upon cases Daugherty approved for which he received payment from Conn.
Daugherty was indicted last year, along with Conn and Alfred Bradley Adkins, a clinical psychologist, according to officials.
The defendants were charged with conspiracy, fraud, false statements, money laundering and other related offenses in connection with the scheme.
Conn pleaded guilty on March 24, to a two-count information charging him with theft of government money and paying illegal gratuities, and was sentenced in absentia on July 14 to 12 years in prison, according to officials.
Conn absconded from court ordered-electronic monitoring on June 2, and is considered a fugitive, according to officials.
He remains under indictment.
On June 12, Adkins was convicted after a jury trial of one count of conspiracy to commit mail fraud and wire fraud, one count of mail fraud, one count of wire fraud and one count of making false statements, officials stated.
Adkins is scheduled to be sentenced on Sept. 22.