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Mom makes kids fake retardation
Filed under: Just For Moms
The next time you're short on cash, and your family is having trouble making ends meet, some extra money from social security might look pretty good. However, tempting as it may seem, don't coach your kids to fake retardation -- you'll only get caught in the end.
That's what happened to Rosie Costello, a 46-year-old mother to Pete and Marie. Starting when her daughter was 4, Costello taught her two kids to feign retardation -- a trick they'd been getting away with for almost 20 years. She's now facing jail time and a hefty restitution fine. Because her son continued the facade into adulthood, he's also been sentenced to at least 6 months in prison, as well as $59,000 in restitution.
Federal prosecutors have yet to locate Marie.
The hoax was foiled when Social Security workers, suspicious of Pete Costello, uncovered Vancouver courtroom video in which he ably contested a traffic violation.
It was bound to happen sooner or later.
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ReaderComments (Page 1 of 1)
2-27-2007 @ 3:15PM
Holmes said...What crappy actors. Absolutely no consistency.
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2-27-2007 @ 3:27PM
Michelle said...This is absolutely sickening. There are children with real disabilities who rely on SSI, or some like us who needed SSI to continue receiving Medicaid benefits that pay for PT, specialty medications and surgeries for our premature son. We lost the $30 a month we were recieving from SSI for him, but what worried us the most was losing Medicaid, which is short of funds and kicking deserving and needing children out. To fake a condition that takes much needed benefits away from those who really are disabled is discusting.
Reply
2-27-2007 @ 5:24PM
SKL said...How would the kids get an education? Wouldn't they have had to be in the special ed classes? How did they manage to screw up their standardized test scores to exactly the right extent? Maybe the SS administration doesn't verify disabilities based on the most logical evidence.
I just hope this didn't go beyond simple fraud to include educational neglect.
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2-27-2007 @ 6:57PM
Uly said...I actually don't blame the son for continuing the ruse. What other options did he have at that point?
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2-28-2007 @ 1:19PM
Kate said...This makes me angry and befuddled all at once. The SSA absolutely requires evidence of a cognitive impairment in the form of scores from an individually administered standardized cognitive battery. How this woman either trained her kids to perform poorly, on multiple administrations, or (more likely) found some ethically defunct examiner to go along with her . . . wow. It really pisses me off because the SSA routinely denies parents and children with significant, chronic cognitive impairments the first time around. In my professional experience, we prepare parents for that very occurrence. I suppose it's cases like this that are the reason for their practice, but obviously it didn't work!
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