New York state cracks down on pension fraud

In a similar case, Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman and New York State Comptroller Thomas P. DiNapoli announced the unsealing of an Albany County Court indictment charging Robert J. Schusteritsch, 71, a resident of Florida, with the crimes of second degree grand larceny and second-degree criminal impersonation. Schusteritsch is alleged to have stolen over $180,000 in pension benefits issued by the New York State and Local Employees Retirement System to his deceased brother, Martin Petschauer, between July 2008 and September 2015.

A growing problem

Joseph M. Belth, professor emeritus of insurance at Indiana University, has been dealing with the issue of unclaimed property since 1980. “Over the years,” Belth said, he has seen examples of legal actions against persons who allegedly stole annuity or pension benefits.

“However, I have not seen any discussions of the magnitude of the problem,” Belth said. He added that he thinks there “are large numbers of such incidents,” but many thefts may not be large enough to warrant criminal charges. Belth noted that he is not “mentioning this subject to defend life insurance companies who use the Social Security Death Master File (DMF) to try to minimize annuity theft while not using the DMF to try to pay unclaimed death benefits.

“Rather, I am mentioning the subject to point out that the companies may have had — and may still have — a major problem in dealing with the theft of annuity benefit payments,” Belth said.

See also:

Minnesota eyes unclaimed property issues

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