A Southwest Oklahoma woman was indicted recently for depositing and spending her father’s federal retirement benefits for almost four years after his death.
Whitney Jamico Brewer, 51, a resident of Lawton and Altus, is charged with theft of government funds and aggravated identity theft. She was indicted earlier this month in Oklahoma City’s Western District federal court.
A man identified in the indictment as J.A.W. “was born in 1948” and was receiving monthly payments from the Social Security Administration (SSA) through the Retirement Insurance Benefit (RIB) program “at the time of his death on Oct. 9, 2019.”
The payments were deposited directly into a demand deposit account held in the man’s name at Pathward N.A. (formerly MetaBank).
Brewer was J.A.W.’s daughter and was his caretaker at the time of his death.
She “did not notify the SSA that her father had died” and so his RIB payments continued to be deposited monthly into his bank account – to which Brewer had access.
Brewer “spent the RIB funds paid after her father’s death at retailers throughout the Altus and Lawton area, as well as online and through automated teller machine cash withdrawals,” the indictment alleges.
On June 1, 2021, Brewer opened a new demand deposit account with The Bancorp Bank in her father’s name, and on May 12, 2023, she asked the SSA to use that bank account “for future RIB payments to J.A.W. — and continued to spend the proceeds.”
The indictment does not disclose the amount of retirement funds Brewer is suspected of embezzling, nor how the money was spent.
Punishment for theft of government funds is up to 10 years in federal prison. The penalty for conviction of aggravated identity theft is two years in federal prison, in addition to any other punishment that is imposed.