California man hid mother’s death for 3 decades to collect her benefits

A California man has admitted that he hid his mother’s death from the federal government for more than three decades so he could collect more than $800,000 in benefits from her, prosecutors said.

The man, Donald Felix Zampach, 65, pleaded guilty to one count of money laundering and one count of Social Security fraud in U.S. District Court in San Diego last week.

None of the $830,238 Mr. Zampach received under the scheme would have been paid had the various government agencies been notified of her death, prosecutors said. Mr. Zampach also took possession of his mother’s house in Poway, California, while it was still in her name.

The charges to which Mr. Zampach pleaded guilty carry an aggregate maximum prison term of 25 years, but federal sentencing guidelines would most likely put his sentence somewhere between 30 and 37 months, as he has no known criminal history, according to Jeffrey D. Hill, a US special assistant attorney.

Mr. Zampach is out on bail and awaits sentencing on September 20.

“He is overwhelmed with regret,” Knut Johnson, Mr. Zampach’s attorney, said in an email.

As part of his plea deal, Mr. Zampach has agreed to forfeit more than $830,000, including his home, to pay restitution to a dozen victims, including several lenders with whom he opened lines of credit while claiming to be his mother, prosecutors said . Those lenders lost more than $28,000 as a result of Mr. Zampach’s actions, prosecutors said.

Mr. Zampach’s mother, identified in court documents only by the initials STZ, died on October 22, 1990 in Japan after being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and moving to her native country from the United States, court documents show. She was 61 when she died, according to Mr. Hill, and would have been 93 if she were alive today.

Most of the money Mr. Zampach earned came from monthly payments by the Social Security Administration and from an annuity paid by the Defense Finance Accounting Service, which pays benefits to military veteran survivors. His mother’s husband had been a veteran of the United States Navy, according to Mr. Hill. Mr. Zampach received $253,714 from the Social Security Administration and $563,626 from the Defense Finance Accounting Service.

Mr. Zampach’s plan to collect his mother’s benefit began shortly after her death, according to court documents.

In November 1990, Mr. Zampach filed a form to notify the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo of her death, but left a box blank on the form asking for her social security number, prosecutors said. When he returned to the United States with his mother’s remains, he also omitted her social security number from a burial permit application.

Mr. Zampach admitted that both omissions were intended to conceal his mother’s death from government authorities so that he could receive her benefits. He kept up the ruse until September 2022, forging her signature on government documents to keep payments flowing. He filed income tax returns in her name for several years.

But Mr. Zampach’s plan began to unravel when his mother became the focus of an audit of the social security administration of people age 90 or older who had not used their Medicare benefits. The audit checks whether those people are still alive.

In June 2022, Mr. Zampach lied to an investigator at the Social Security Administration, saying that “his mother was alive and in Japan,” according to the plea deal.

As part of the terms of his parole, Mr Zampach, who says he has dementia and auditory and visual hallucinations, must seek psychiatric or psychological treatment, court documents show.