Social Security keeps paying until someone tells the agency that a beneficiary has died, and prosecutors say a New York man put that gap to use. David Darling is accused of using his dead brother’s ATM card to take $109,746 in Social Security benefits, with withdrawals beginning the day after the death. The case is…

Prosecutors say an Illinois woman kept her mother’s body in a garage deep freezer for two years while Social Security benefits in the mother’s name kept being collected. Her case sits inside a Justice Department sweep that charged 17 people in 11 federal districts between Aug. 21 and Sept. 18, with intended losses of $1.34…

A federal jury in Texas found Marina Brooks, 70, and Charles Brooks, 74, of Irving guilty on Sept. 28 of conspiracy to commit wire fraud. Prosecutors say the couple took at least $9.5 million from more than 700 investors, many of them drawn in by radio ads. The Brookses have been convicted but not sentenced,…

Thirty-five states have enacted some form of crypto ATM regulation since 2023, and 18 of those laws passed this year alone, according to a tracker AARP updated Sept. 14. The wave follows growing recognition among state lawmakers that cryptocurrency kiosks, machines that convert cash into digital currency, have become a common final step in scams…

The FBI’s Sept. 17 alert on government-impersonation fraud names four separate scripts, and the smallest of them by dollar loss is a fake license-renewal notice: 496 complaints and more than $348,000 lost. Unlike the alert’s medical-license and jury-duty categories, this script does not require a target to hold a specific job or have a pending…

Doctors, nurses and other license holders are being targeted by callers posing as medical board investigators or state licensing officials, and the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center says that scheme drew 3,322 complaints and more than $37 million in losses. The bureau counted the pattern inside the same Sept. 17 alert on law-enforcement and government…

A caller who claims a missed jury summons or a missed court date is impersonating a court officer or a sheriff’s deputy, and the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center says that exact script drew 6,833 complaints and nearly $36 million in losses. The bureau logged the pattern inside a Sept. 17 alert on government-impersonation fraud…

A Wisconsin man who built an online persona as a real-estate investment expert was sentenced to 48 months in federal prison after taking $2.76 million from investors, most of them fellow Nigerian immigrants and members of his own church. Joseph Nantomah, 49, marketed himself as “The Black Mentor” and hosted conferences and classes built around…

A Chicago man was sentenced to 160 months in federal prison for supplying nearly $1.5 million in stolen and altered U.S. Treasury checks to co-conspirators who cashed them at banks and credit unions across eastern Iowa. Tyrone Terrell Harris, 34, was sentenced in federal court in Cedar Rapids after a scheme that ran checks meant…

The Trump administration’s Department of Agriculture has moved against 170 food stamp retailers across New York City, spanning all five boroughs, with penalties that range from a temporary suspension to permanent removal from the program. The announcement frames New York City as one piece of a much larger nationwide sweep against retailer fraud in the…