A federal judge cut a break for a 76-year-old Ohio woman, giving her probation but no jail time after she admitted to stealing nearly 50 years’ worth of benefit checks from the Department of Veterans Affairs in the name of her long-dead mother.
Gladys Queen was entitled to the benefits as the widow of a World War II Army vet, but they should have ended with her death in 1973. Her daughter, Irene Ferrin, never reported the death and spent the ensuing decades forging her mother’s signature to keep the VA benefits flowing.
She raked in $461,780.