A Florida man buried his mother's body to collect her Social Security check, a pension payment
Losing a parent can make you feel as if the ground is shifting under your feet.
It can unmoor even the sturdiest of individuals, but Brian Adams reaction to his mother's death remains one for the books.
The 56-year-old was living in Green Cove Springs, a Florida town about 30 miles south of Jacksonville, when his 79-year-old mother Janell died from natural causes in July 2014, he later told authorities.
Where most people might feel a sense of a loss or the need to reconsider one's life, the unemployed Adams merely saw an opportunity. His late mother, after all, had been receiving both a Social Security check and a pension payment each month.
He, along with his son who remained unnamed by authorities, buried his mother. That might seem like the next logical step, but he didn't tell anyone about it, including the authorities.
And rather than purchase a casket and maybe have a minister give a eulogy, he dug a deep hole in his mother's own backyard. Then, he placed her body it in, and tossed the dirt back on top.
Once his mother's corpse was hidden in the ground, he took her monthly pension and Social Security checks and deposited them in her name. He then transferred the money into his own account.
In all, his take was $35,345, the Naples Daily News reported.
The racket might have gone undetected, but in June 2015 Adams decided to tell his daughter Brittanie about his scheme.
"He explained that if he had reported her death to the police, the benefits would have been discontinued and then he would have had no way to support himself or his son," stated the plea agreement obtained by People. "Adams explained, in detail, how he and his son removed his mother's body from her house after finding her deceased and buried her in the backyard."
Brittanie immediately called the police, who arrested Adams.
He was a registered felon, according to the Clay County Sheriff's Office, having been arrested for both a 2011 possession of marijuana charge and a 2012 driving with a suspended license charge.
On Monday, Adams pleaded guilty to theft of government property and aggravated identity theft. As of early Wednesday morning, a sentencing hearing had not yet been set, but Adams faces a maximum penalty of 12 years in federal prison.
"We prosecuted him for the theft of the checks, so our interest was the financial gain," William Daniels, a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Middle District of Florida, told People.
Still, the investigation into his mother's death continues.
It bears noting that people have denied others a proper burial for far less.
In New York City earlier this year, a 30-year-old man named Christopher Fuhrer was arrested after he kept his grandmother's corpse, wrapped in trash bags and covered in air fresheners, in her two-story house in Queens for several years.
His reason? So he wouldn't lose the house, in which he had been living.
Also in New York City, in 2015, 60-year-old Mary Kersting kept her 93-year-old mother's corpse in the deceased woman's apartment for more than a year in order to collect her Social Security and pension checks. The body had mostly rotted by the time police found it 14 months later during a wellness check.
Kersting was sentenced to six months in jail, followed by five years of probation, the New York Daily News reported.
In Eugene, Ore., in 2013, 47-year-old Carel June Cody was sentenced to 57 months in prison after burying the body of a man who lived in the unlicensed adult foster care she operated in her home. She cashed more than $200,000 in his Social Security checks over 16 years.
Cody was so desperate to hide her crime that she placed bags of lime on the man's body before burial as a means of speeding up decomposition, the Oregonian reported.
This sort of behavior happens so often that in 2014, the Social Security Administration's Inspector General Office called it "surprisingly common" and has named the practice - "deceased payee fraud."
One man actually cashed his deceased mother's Social Security checks for 40 years after her death, earning $304,853 in the process.
© 2016 The Washington Post
(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
It can unmoor even the sturdiest of individuals, but Brian Adams reaction to his mother's death remains one for the books.
The 56-year-old was living in Green Cove Springs, a Florida town about 30 miles south of Jacksonville, when his 79-year-old mother Janell died from natural causes in July 2014, he later told authorities.
Where most people might feel a sense of a loss or the need to reconsider one's life, the unemployed Adams merely saw an opportunity. His late mother, after all, had been receiving both a Social Security check and a pension payment each month.
He, along with his son who remained unnamed by authorities, buried his mother. That might seem like the next logical step, but he didn't tell anyone about it, including the authorities.
And rather than purchase a casket and maybe have a minister give a eulogy, he dug a deep hole in his mother's own backyard. Then, he placed her body it in, and tossed the dirt back on top.
Once his mother's corpse was hidden in the ground, he took her monthly pension and Social Security checks and deposited them in her name. He then transferred the money into his own account.
In all, his take was $35,345, the Naples Daily News reported.
The racket might have gone undetected, but in June 2015 Adams decided to tell his daughter Brittanie about his scheme.
"He explained that if he had reported her death to the police, the benefits would have been discontinued and then he would have had no way to support himself or his son," stated the plea agreement obtained by People. "Adams explained, in detail, how he and his son removed his mother's body from her house after finding her deceased and buried her in the backyard."
Brittanie immediately called the police, who arrested Adams.
He was a registered felon, according to the Clay County Sheriff's Office, having been arrested for both a 2011 possession of marijuana charge and a 2012 driving with a suspended license charge.
On Monday, Adams pleaded guilty to theft of government property and aggravated identity theft. As of early Wednesday morning, a sentencing hearing had not yet been set, but Adams faces a maximum penalty of 12 years in federal prison.
"We prosecuted him for the theft of the checks, so our interest was the financial gain," William Daniels, a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Middle District of Florida, told People.
Still, the investigation into his mother's death continues.
It bears noting that people have denied others a proper burial for far less.
In New York City earlier this year, a 30-year-old man named Christopher Fuhrer was arrested after he kept his grandmother's corpse, wrapped in trash bags and covered in air fresheners, in her two-story house in Queens for several years.
His reason? So he wouldn't lose the house, in which he had been living.
Also in New York City, in 2015, 60-year-old Mary Kersting kept her 93-year-old mother's corpse in the deceased woman's apartment for more than a year in order to collect her Social Security and pension checks. The body had mostly rotted by the time police found it 14 months later during a wellness check.
Kersting was sentenced to six months in jail, followed by five years of probation, the New York Daily News reported.
In Eugene, Ore., in 2013, 47-year-old Carel June Cody was sentenced to 57 months in prison after burying the body of a man who lived in the unlicensed adult foster care she operated in her home. She cashed more than $200,000 in his Social Security checks over 16 years.
Cody was so desperate to hide her crime that she placed bags of lime on the man's body before burial as a means of speeding up decomposition, the Oregonian reported.
This sort of behavior happens so often that in 2014, the Social Security Administration's Inspector General Office called it "surprisingly common" and has named the practice - "deceased payee fraud."
One man actually cashed his deceased mother's Social Security checks for 40 years after her death, earning $304,853 in the process.
© 2016 The Washington Post
(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
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