Canadian man indicted, arrested for nearly 30-year Social Security benefit fraud scheme

ANCHORAGE, Alaska - A Canadian man was arrested in Los Angeles on July 8 after a federal grand jury in Alaska returned an indictment charging him with stealing over $420,000 of his mother's Social Security benefits in a nearly 30-year complex fraud scheme.

According to court documents, beginning in roughly 1995, Ellis Kingsep, aka Ellis King, 77, allegedly created private postal mailbox accounts to hide the fact that he was a sending and receiving his mother's mail. The defendant allegedly changed the mailing addresses for his mother every few years to a new address in California, and eventually Vancouver, British Columbia, and Alaska.

In 2013, the Social Security Administration received a change of address notice signed by Kingsep's mother, stating that she was moving to Alaska and requested her address be changed to one in Fairbanks. The address in Fairbanks was for a mail forwarding service that, allegedly per instructions from the defendant, would receive the mail in his mother's name, repackage it in his name and ship it to two different private mailbox services located in Vancouver. Those services, again allegedly per instructions from the defendant, would repackage and forward the mail to private mailbox services in Los Angeles, where Kingsep would regularly collect his mail. The indictment alleges the mother's name or information were not used for any of the private mailbox registrations. All registrations were done with Kingsep's information, and they were all in his name.

Beginning in 1996, the Social Security Administration made direct deposits of Social Security retirement benefits for Kingsep's mother into a different bank account than previously used. The new account was held in the names of the defendant and his mother. The Social Security Administration continued the direct deposits until 2023. Bank security video shows the defendant regularly withdrawing cash from the account in Los Angeles.

The indictment alleges that the defendant's mother would be 102 at the time of indictment, and that there has been no record of her since 1993.

Kingsep is charged with five counts of mail fraud in violation of 18 U.S.C. §1341, one count of aggravated identity theft in violation of 18 U.S.C. §1028A and one count of social security fraud in violation of 18 U.S.C. §408(a)(3). The defendant made his initial court appearance on July 11 before the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California and is awaiting transport to Alaska by the U.S. Marshal's Service. If convicted, he faces a mandatory sentence of two years in prison for aggravated identity theft, in addition to up to 20 years in prison for his other alleged crimes. A federal district court judge will determine any sentence after considering the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines and other statutory factors.

U.S. Attorney S. Lane Tucker of the District of Alaska and Special Agent-in-Charge Christian Assaad, of the Denver Seattle Field Division, Social Security Administration, Office of the Inspector General made the announcement.

The Social Security Administration Office of Inspector General is investigating the case.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Tom Bradley is prosecuting the case.

An indictment is merely an allegation, and all defendants are presumed innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law.

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