A Georgia man who redirected the benefits of veterans and Social Security Administration beneficiaries to accounts that his co-conspirators set up and controlled has been sentenced to 78 months in federal prison, to be followed by five years of supervised release.
Jamare Mason, 27, was also ordered to pay more than $1.3 million in restitution to his victims, according to a Department of Justice release.
Related
According to the DOJ, Mason was a member of a conspiracy that obtained the personal information (including names, dates of birth, and Social Security numbers) of disabled veterans and Social Security beneficiaries. That information was used by the conspirators to fraudulently open bank accounts and prepaid debit cards in the victims’ names.
They also forged documents in the victims’ names that directed the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs and the Social Security Administration to deposit benefit payments into those fraudulent accounts, instead of the victims’ legitimate bank accounts, according to the release.
Mason and his co-conspirators withdrew those funds from ATMs and banks throughout South Florida and Georgia for their own personal use. Most of the money was ultimately funneled to the architects of the scheme in Jamaica.
“Over the course of five years, from 2012 to 2017, members of the conspiracy attempted to redirect over $1.8 million in benefits from more than a hundred disabled veterans and Social Security beneficiaries,” the release states.
Although several of these attempts were blocked, the defendants’ scheme resulted in the actual loss of over $1 million, cash that was diverted from disabled veterans and Social Security beneficiaries. In each instance, the federal government reimbursed these victims for the full amounts of their stolen benefits.
Related
In November 2021, Mason pled guilty to conspiring to commit bank and wire fraud. He was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Raag Singhal.
Reach Julia LeDoux at Julia@connectingvets.com.