Court: SSDI benefits reviewer was collecting SSDI

SSA employees already had noticed that Perry was working by the late 1990s, but the SSA never contacted Perry or stopped his payments, and the SSA actually increased Perry’s SSDI payments at one point expressly because Perry was working, Evans said.

In 2004, the SSA asked Evans to participate in the Ticket to Work program, a program for SSDI beneficiaries who are interested in returning to work, and he used that program to attend college, Evans said.

Perry lived a modest lifestyle, and he did not enrich himself at the public’s expense, Evans said.

In June 2007, the SSA hired Perry to be a benefits authorizer. He earned $40,000 to $53,000 per year, and his job description included responsibility for reviewing SSDI applications and processing overpayment assessments for claimants who returned to work, the lawyers for SSA said.

Lawyers for the SSA said Perry failed to comply with SSDI program rules requiring him to report his employment to SSA or Medicare

In September 2012, a jury found Perry guilty of Social Security fraud, federal health benefit program fraud and health care fraud.

Evans said Perry did not intentionally violate program rules.

When Perry began working for the SSDI program, “he was under the impression that he was entitled to receive 12 months of SSDI benefits while working regardless of the amount of employment income for that 12-month period,” Evans said. “He received and negotiated 12 SSDI  payments while employed at SSA. He received an additional 11 SSDI checks, but none of them were ever negotiated.”

While the case was at the pretrial stage, Perry’s lawyers called for the judge to dismiss the case, arguing that the government had not specified when most of the alleged crimes had occurred, had ignored the effect of statutes of limitations, had ignored the complexity and vagueness of SSDI work rules, and were punishing Perry even though Perry sincerely believed that he was eligible for the benefits he had received.