Widower bilks $781K in pension payments sent to long-dead teacher wife: probe – New York Post

Metro

by mary kay lindge and Susan Edelman

A Queens widow pocketed more than $781,000 in pension payments to the wife of a deceased schoolteacher for 18 years before city officials discovered the theft, an investigation has found.

This staggering amount of money not recovered by the taxpayer-funded Teachers’ Retirement System (TRS) is perhaps the most egregious case of individuals collecting unjust payments. $100 billion pension fund Experts say it’s something they’ve never seen before.

“This is a huge amount of money, and it’s extraordinary that it lasted for nearly 20 years,” said John Murphy, former executive director of NYCERS, another major pension plan for city employees. Told. “This should be turned over to the District Attorney’s Office.”

The new report comes just weeks after TRS filed a lawsuit against another widow who was wrongly embezzled with $123,560 after the death of her husband, a retired teacher.

When former teacher Lenora Burgess died in Queens in February 2002 at age 57, her husband, Owen, was responsible for notifying TRS of his wife’s death, the city school task force announced. Newly released report.

Lenora had selected the “maximum retirement benefit” option. This would mean an annual pension of $42,419 and no further payments to her heirs upon her death.

But Owen Burgess, then 54, of Flushing, never told the agency about his wife’s death.

Therefore, her pension checks continued to arrive in electronic payments of $3,535 each month for the next 221 months.

It was in August 2020 that an unidentified whistleblower finally told TRS that the teacher had died 18 years ago.

At that point, red-faced pension officials tried to recover the $781,214.96 that TRS had deposited into the couple’s bank account.

However, they were unable to collect a single penny. “O. Burgess’ bank repeatedly rejected attempts to reverse, citing lack of funds,” the report said.

By then, records show, Owen Burgess had become homeless with a series of civil lawsuits filed against him for credit card fraud, car accidents and other crimes.

After a four-month search, investigators contacted Burgess by phone. He declined to be interviewed but blamed the TRS for the failure.

“Mr Burgess claimed that after his wife’s death, he did not understand why pension payments continued for so many years when he was not entitled to them,” the report said.

When questioned by investigators, TRS officials explained what amounted to an honor system for removing deceased pensioners from the rolls.

“The onus is on the pensioner’s family to report the death to the TRS,” they told SCI.

They also claimed to “regularly” run the names of retirees through external databases, but “these databases did not always generate the names of all deceased members,” the report said. states.

Former pensions chief Murphy criticized that excuse as flimsy. He also questioned how the bank continued to pay out funds to Mr Burgess.

“The banks were negligent, as were the retirement plans. They allowed this money to be distributed in a fraudulent manner,” he said.

Without answers, he said, “we don’t know if this is a one-time glitch or a common occurrence that can happen over and over again.”

SCI Anastasia Coleman, who also serves as TRS’ inspector general, recommended that the pension system continue to require repayment from the apparently penniless Burgess. She said he had no plans to pursue criminal charges in the case.

He also recommended a new policy that would require retirees to provide annual proof of survival.

“Continued failure to recertify should ultimately result in pension distributions being suspended until further information is provided,” Coleman wrote.