BURLINGTON — A 43-year-old White River Junction man was sentenced to three years probation in federal court for stealing his deceased father’s Social Security payments, the U.S. Attorney for Vermont said in a news release.
Following a guilty plea in U.S. District Court in Burlington in July, John O’Hara Jr. on Thursday was also ordered to pay restitution of $51,346 to the Social Security Administration, which was the amount of his father’s Social Security payments O’Hara Jr. misappropriated for himself, according to the U.S. Attorney’s office,
Federal prosecutors charged O’Hara Jr. in June with unlawfully appropriating his deceased father’s Social Security payments — which should have been terminated upon his father’s death in 2018 — from his father’s bank account in Florida which O’Hara Jr. then transferred to a bank account which he controlled in another state for his own access, the U.S. Attorney’s office said.