RIVERSIDE, Calif. (CN) - A former deputy public defender for Riverside County was sentenced Monday to a year and a day in prison for cashing $129,795 in Social Security checks for her dead grandmother for 12 years.
Audrey Owens, 61, of Upland, retired from Riverside County in September 2013. She pleaded guilty in March to two counts of theft of government property, admitting that she had "bilked the government for 12 years," the U.S. Attorney's Office said.
Owens' grandmother died in 2000, after which Owens changed the address of a joint account they had shared and continued to receive the dead woman's Social Security payments, prosecutors said in a statement.
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