A 63-year-old Long Island man pleaded guilty to collect his mother’s pension checks for more than a year after she died in April 2021.
Suffolk County prosecutors said former Town of Huntington employee Moses K. Johnson transferred 15 payments totaling $56,411 from his mother’s bank account to his own between the time of Johnson’s mother’s death and June 30, 2022.
The defendant, who pleaded guilty to felony theft Tuesday, spent more than 30 years working for the Huntington recycling center before retiring in 2017, according to the Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office.
He has been ordered to pay restitution and return to court on December 10. There is no mandatory prison sentence for a Class E felony, which Johnson was doing, even though he could receive a maximum sentence of four years behind bars.
Prosecutors allege Johnson knew that as a retiree he had an obligation to report his mother’s death to either her bank or the New York State and Local Retirement Center.
District Attorney Raymond Tierney called his actions “morally reprehensible.”