Minnesota woman posed as dead mom to keep Social Security payments coming for 25 years

A Minnesota woman is going to prison for assuming the identity of her dead mother and collecting more than $360,000 in Social Security benefits.

Mavious Redmond, 54, of Austin, was sentenced Thursday in U.S. District Court in Minneapolis to one year and one day in prison after pleading guilty to a scheme she perpetrated for 25 years.

“Redmond’s scheme was brazen and shameless,” said acting U.S. Attorney Joseph H. Thompson. “This wasn’t free money. It was taxpayer money, stolen from a program built on the hard work of Minnesotans who paid in every paycheck.”

Ahead of sentencing, defense attorney Robert Meyers argued in a court filing for his client to be spared prison and be put on probation for two years.

Meyers noted that Redmond lived with her parents until they died and couldn’t survive on her $8 an hour job at a Subway sandwich shop.

“In these desperate circumstances, she found a way out through this offense: she did not report her mother’s death to Social Security and continued to collect her mother’s Social Security benefits.”

Meyers said the benefits totaled about $14,000 a year and described the amount as a “subsistence amount of money.”

When her mother died in 1999, Redmond contacted the Social Security Administration and asked what she would need to do if her mother died. The agency replied that it would need to be notified so the benefits can be terminated.

Redmond made no such notification and kept the monthly flow of retirement payments coming. She used her dead mother’s identity as her own, forged her mother’s signature, and used her mother’s documents and biographical information — including her mother’s date of birth and Social Security number — on official forms. She also changed her mother’s address to her own.

In one instance, Redmond visited the administration office on June 4, 2024, posing as her mother, and submitted an application for a Social Security card using her mother’s name, date of birth, Social Security number and forged signature.