Author: Elizabeth Blessing
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A 23-year-old who posed as Coinbase staff drained nearly $16 million from about 100 people, gambled away $6 million and got 4 to 12 years
A Brooklyn courtroom sentenced Ronald Spektor, 23, of Sheepshead Bay, to 4 to 12 years in prison on September 23, 2026, after prosecutors said he posed as Coinbase support staff and persuaded roughly 100 people to move their cryptocurrency into wallets he controlled. The scheme drained nearly $16 million before investigators closed in. Spektor gambled…
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Auditors found a surviving spouse collecting $1,826 a month when Social Security could have paid $2,757 at 70
A surviving spouse received $1,826 a month in combined Social Security benefits well past age 70, an amount auditors say should have grown to $2,757 a month once delayed retirement credits were properly applied. The gap, worth $10,382 in benefits the beneficiary never received, appears in a March 2026 audit from the Social Security Administration’s…
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Social Security cut off a student’s benefits a year early over a wrong graduation date, shorting the student $1,946
One student’s Social Security file listed an expected graduation date of June 2022, a full year before that student actually finished high school in June 2023. The agency stopped the monthly benefit on schedule with the recorded date rather than the real one, underpaying the student $1,946 before the record was corrected. The case appears…
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A teen left high school in January, but Social Security kept paying student benefits until June, leaving a $9,330 overpayment
A teenager stopped attending high school in January 2023. The Social Security Administration did not catch the change for five months, continuing to send a student benefit check through June and creating a $9,330 overpayment by the time the agency finally closed the case. The example surfaced in a September 23, 2026 report from the…
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The VA says 94 percent of its disability decisions are accurate
Every disability compensation decision the Department of Veterans Affairs makes is supposed to get checked against the same question: was it correct. The agency says 94 percent of them were, the highest rate it has reported in two years. The figure appeared inside a September 22 update that also announced faster claims processing, and VA…
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The average new compact SUV sold for $37,722 in August
A parts shortage at one automaker and a discontinued model at another quietly reshaped which small SUV sold the most in August. Compact SUVs, long one of the new-vehicle market’s most competitive segments, averaged $37,722 during the month — the slowest price growth of any of the industry’s top five segments, and a sign of…
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Food stamp purchase limits stay blocked in Colorado, Iowa, Nebraska, Tennessee and West Virginia under a June court order
USDA calls it a demonstration project when a state asks to bar SNAP shoppers from buying soda or candy. A federal court in Washington called it something else this summer: exceeding the agency’s authority under the wrong section of federal law. That distinction is why five states that once had approved SNAP purchase restrictions still…
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Texas has 646,356 fewer people on food stamps than it did a year ago
Between June 2025 and June 2026, the number of Texans receiving Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits fell by 646,356, according to USDA’s state-level participation table. The state’s SNAP caseload measured 3,457,259 people in June 2025 and 2,810,903 in June 2026, a decline of about 18.7 percent. Texas’s decline is steeper in percentage terms than the…
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New car prices in the government’s index are up just 0.6 percent in a year
New vehicles are one of the quietest categories in an otherwise noisy inflation report. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Consumer Price Index shows new-vehicle prices up just 0.6 percent over the twelve months ending in August 2026, a fraction of the 3.4 percent increase in prices overall. That figure sits in the same report…
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Utility gas service costs 4.4 percent more than a year ago
Piped natural gas delivered to homes cost 4.4 percent more in August 2026 than it did a year earlier, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Consumer Price Index. The same report shows that price actually falling during the month the data was collected. Both numbers are accurate at once, and the gap between…