A 71-year-old New Bedford man is charged with stealing more than $450,000 in Veterans Affairs benefits from a 20-year Marine who was diagnosed with ALS.
Joseph Smith faces charges of one count each of theft of government benefits and conspiracy to steal government benefits. Smith is currently in custody on unrelated charges and is scheduled to be arraigned on these new charges in federal court in Boston on Tuesday.
“Eighty years ago this week, incredibly brave members of our military stormed the beaches of Normandy to save Europe. Every citizen owes a debt of gratitude to the veterans who have served our country,” acting U.S. Attorney for Massachusetts Joshua Levy said in a statement.
“It is beyond the pale to steal disability payments that were intended for a 20-year military veteran facing a life-threatening disease, as is alleged here,” Levy added. “The immorality exposed by the criminal justice system is, at times, simply stunning.”
The feds say that the victim in the case started receiving Veterans Benefits Administration checks for $8,318 per month starting in September 2015, shortly after his diagnosis of Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis. ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, is a “fatal type of motor neuron disease,” according to Johns Hopkins Medicine, that “causes progressive degeneration of nerve cells in the spinal cord and brain.”
The victim, who “breathed with a ventilator and was dependent upon others for his everyday care,” signed the benefits form with an X due to his “severe health issues,” according to an affidavit supporting the charges written by a U.S. Postal Inspection Service inspector. He died from complications of the disease in October of last year.
The benefits checks were sent to his former residence on Nelson Street in New Bedford, where the victim had lived with his brother — who died in August 2022 — and one of Smith’s relatives and others before he was hospitalized, according to the affidavit.
Smith, the feds allege, took those checks and deposited them into the bank for his own financial benefit from 2015 through May of 2020, when a Dartmouth Police officer recovered the victim’s Social Security card and ID after Smith and others tried to use them to open a bank account in the victim’s name.
The victim had appointed his daughter as his power of attorney, the affidavit notes, but she was repeatedly unable to retrieve her father’s black briefcase that included his important legal documents including his Social Security card and birth certificate because other residents of the address “were uncooperative.”
