A Massachusetts woman was sentenced this month for stealing more than $100,000 in Social Security benefits meant for someone who had already died. Jennifer Valley, 51, of Barre, had been appointed the beneficiary’s representative payee — the person trusted to manage someone else’s Social Security check and account for how it was spent. Instead of reporting the death, prosecutors say she kept collecting the payments and certified to the government that thousands of dollars paid out after the death had gone toward the beneficiary’s ongoing care.
What a Representative Payee Report Is Supposed to Do
The Social Security Administration appoints a representative payee when a beneficiary cannot manage their own benefits, often because of age, illness, or disability. The payee is required to spend the money for the beneficiary’s needs and to file periodic reports certifying how the funds were used. Valley had been appointed to that role for a beneficiary she had previously lived with, managing the person’s retirement benefits and providing regular accountings to the SSA.
She never told the SSA that the beneficiary had died. In June 2023, she filed a representative payee report stating that all the benefits paid in the prior 12 months — including $23,157 that arrived after the death — had been spent for the beneficiary’s benefit, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Massachusetts. That certification is the specific act prosecutors built the case around: not simply keeping money that no longer belonged to her, but formally telling the government, in writing, that it had already been spent the way the law required.
The document itself is a routine piece of SSA paperwork most payees never think twice about. Once a year, the agency mails most individual representative payees a Representative Payee Report — Form SSA-623 — asking them to state, in broad categories such as food, housing, medical care and personal needs, how the prior twelve months of benefits were used, and to certify the answer is accurate. Payees are separately required to keep the underlying receipts and bank records for at least two years and hand them over if SSA asks. Certifying that $23,157 paid out after a death had gone toward that person’s ongoing food and housing, as prosecutors say Valley’s June 2023 report did, is what turned an unreported death into a specific, provable false statement rather than a paperwork lapse the agency might otherwise have caught and corrected quietly.
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Nearly Three Years and $100,218 Later
From October 2022 through August 2025, Valley took approximately $100,218 in Social Security retirement benefits that no longer belonged to her once the beneficiary died, prosecutors say. In December 2023, she updated the beneficiary’s mailing address with the SSA to her own, a step investigators describe as part of an effort to keep the checks — and the concealment — going.
Valley was charged in April 2026 and pleaded guilty a month later, according to the charging announcement from the same U.S. Attorney’s Office.
The Statutory Maximum Was Ten Years
Valley pleaded guilty to one count of theft of government money, charged under 18 U.S.C. § 641 — the same federal statute that criminalizes embezzling, stealing or knowingly converting money belonging to the United States. Once the amount at issue exceeds $1,000, as the $100,218 here does many times over, the statute allows a sentence of up to 10 years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000. The sentence Judge Guzman actually handed down — one day in custody, deemed already served, plus supervised release — landed far below that ceiling; the U.S. Attorney’s Office’s own announcement of the sentence does not state a reason for the gap between the statutory maximum and the sentence imposed, and federal judges are required to weigh sentencing guidelines and individual case factors rather than the statutory ceiling alone.
One Day Served, Ten Months of Home Confinement
U.S. District Court Judge Margaret R. Guzman sentenced Valley on August 28 to one day in prison, deemed already served, plus three years of supervised release that includes ten months of home confinement. She was also ordered to repay the full $100,218 in restitution. The Social Security Administration’s Office of Inspector General, Boston Field Division, investigated the case and is credited in the agency’s own record of the guilty plea, which mirrors the U.S. Attorney’s account of the case almost word for word — a sign of how closely the two agencies coordinated on the investigation from charge through sentencing.
Why the SSA Doesn’t Catch Every Death Right Away
Social Security relies heavily on states, funeral homes, and family members to report deaths promptly. When nobody reports it — or when a representative payee actively works to keep the record wrong, as prosecutors say Valley did — payments can keep flowing for months or years. That gap is why the agency treats a false representative payee report as a distinct, prosecutable offense rather than a paperwork mistake.
Massachusetts Built a Hotline for Cases Like This
Prosecutors tied the case to the district-wide Benefit & Voter Fraud Team that Massachusetts U.S. Attorney Leah B. Foley created in March 2026, a unit built specifically to investigate misuse of taxpayer-funded benefits across the state. Massachusetts residents who suspect a representative payee, caregiver, or anyone else is misusing someone’s Social Security, SNAP, or other public benefits can report it by calling 1-855-SCAM-MA-1 (855-722-6621), the number the U.S. Attorney’s Office lists in its own case announcements, including the release covering Valley’s sentence.
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This article was produced with AI assistance and reviewed by a human editor. Figures are linked to their primary sources; where a claim could not be verified from the public record, we say so.
