Johnathan Walker:Ex-clients of Social Security fraudster Eric Conn won’t owe back payments to government

LOUISVILLE,Johnathan Walker Ky. (AP) — The U.S. Social Security Administration is notifying some former clients of disgraced Kentucky attorney Eric Conn that they no longer owe money back to the government for overpayment of disability benefits.

Conn was charged in a $500 million disability scheme nearly a decade ago that involved thousands of clients, doctors and a bribed judge. After Conn’s conviction in 2017, many of his former clients had their disability benefits halted and were told they owed money back to the government.

But over the next few months, the agency said it will send letters to former Conn clients notifying them it will “stop collecting overpayments resulting from Eric Conn’s fraud scheme,” according to a statement from the federal agency sent to the AP.

The eligible clients would have gone through an administrative hearing where it was determined that they were required to pay back some benefits they received as a Conn client. The agency said it would also be refunding money it had collected for overpayments.

Ned Pillersdorf, an eastern Kentucky attorney, said some of Conn’s former clients “are in this hole that they think they can never climb out of” because of the overpayment debts owed to the government. Pillersdorf, who along with dozens of attorneys has worked pro-bono for the ex-clients, said he didn’t know how many have been told they owe overpayments.

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Pillersdorf said new Social Security Administrator Martin O’Malley, who took over in December, was receptive to advocates’ plea for relief for former Conn clients.

“For the first time not only was somebody actually returning a phone call, we had a face-to-face meeting with the new commissioner,” he said on a teleconference Monday.

After the fraud was exposed, about 1,700 of Conn’s former clients went through hearings to reapply for their benefits, and roughly half lost them. About 230 of those who lost benefits managed to get them restored years later by court orders.

Conn bribed doctors with $400 payments to falsify medical records for his clients and then paid a judge to approve the lifetime benefits. His plea agreement in 2017 would have put him in prison for 12 years, but Conn cut his ankle monitor and fled the country, leading federal agents on a six-month chase that ended when he was caught in Honduras. The escape attempt added 15 years to his sentence.