Austin woman sentenced in 25-year Social Security scam

Date: August 21, 2025

Contact: newsroom@ci.irs.gov

MINNEAPOLIS — Mavious Redmond of Austin, Minnesota, has been sentenced to a year and a day in prison and a year of supervised released for the scheme she devised and executed, announced Acting U.S. Attorney Joseph H. Thompson.

“Redmond’s scheme was brazen and shameless,” said Acting U.S. Attorney Joseph H. Thompson. “For 25 years, she posed as her dead mother to steal more than $360,000 in social security benefits. This wasn’t free money. It was taxpayer money, stolen from a program built on the hard work of Minnesotans who paid in every paycheck. Cases like this are part of the broader fraud crisis gripping our state, where too many see taxpayer programs as their own personal piggy banks. We will not let it stand. We will keep bringing prosecutions until every fraudster in Minnesota understands there is a price for stealing from the taxpayers.”

According to court documents, beginning in 1999 and continuing through June 2024, Mavious Redmond devised and carried out a 25-year scheme to steal the Social Security Retirement Insurance Benefits intended for her deceased mother. Through lies and deceit, Redmond fraudulently collected $360,627 in Social Security funds.

From the outset, defendant Redmond’s fraud began with a lie. In 1999, following her mother’s passing, Redmond reached out to the Social Security Administration (“SSA”) and posed a hypothetical—if her mother had passed away, what would she need to do? The SSA told Redmond that she needed to inform the SSA so that her mother’s SSA benefits would be terminated. Despite specifically seeking out and learning the lawful and appropriate thing to do, Redmond instead chose to defraud the government. She did so for more than two decades and at great length.

Over the years, defendant Redmond’s lies and deceitful actions grew. Redmond posed as her deceased mother, again and again. She used her mother’s identity as her own, forged her mother’s signature, and used her mother’s documents and biographical information, including her mother’s date of birth and social security number, on official forms. Redmond would change her mother’s address to reflect Redmond’s own address changes. Moreover, when Redmond needed to, she posed as her mother, both over the phone and in-person. For example, on June 4, 2024, Redmond personally visited the SSA office, posing as her deceased mother, and submitted a fraudulent SS-5 Application for Social Security Form using her mother’s name, date of birth, social security number, and forging her deceased mother’s signature.

Indeed, Redmond’s elaborate and fraudulent scheme prompted the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to falsely believe the defendant’s dead mother to be alive. Based on this understanding, the IRS distributed $3,200 of COVID-19 Economic Impact Payments to the Defendant Redmond’s dead mother’s bank account, in which the defendant accessed and converted the IRS funds to her

In handling down her sentence, Judge Brasel noted as aggravating factors that Redmond defrauded the government for “such a long time” and that Redmond impersonated her deceased mother—both on the phone and in person—before so many federal agents and agencies.

This case is the result of an investigation conducted by the IRS and the Social Security Administration – Office of Inspector General.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Matthew D. Evans prosecuted the case.

IRS Criminal Investigation (IRS-CI) is the law enforcement arm of the IRS, responsible for conducting financial crime investigations, including tax fraud, narcotics trafficking, money laundering, public corruption, healthcare fraud, identity theft and more. IRS-CI special agents are the only federal law enforcement agents with investigative jurisdiction over violations of the Internal Revenue Code, obtaining a 90% federal conviction rate. The agency has 19 field offices located across the U.S. and 14 attaché posts abroad.