September 7, 2018
Former Eastern Kentucky disability attorney Eric C. Conn will spend at least the next 22 years in prison.
U.S. District Judge Danny C. Reeves sentenced Conn, 58, on Friday for his role in a scheme to defraud the Social Security Administration on a staggering scale.
Conn initially pleaded guilty last year to stealing from the government through fraudulent disability claims and bribing a Social Security judge. That plea deal called for a 12-year sentence.
Before the sentencing hearing, however, Conn fled the country. He ultimately ended up in Honduras, where police caught him in December after six months on the run.
That meant Conn faced escape charges, as well as fraud and other charges left over from the initial indictment against him, which prosecutors refused to dismiss after he fled.
Conn pleaded guilty in June to three more charges: conspiracy to defraud the Social Security Administration; conspiracy to escape; and conspiracy to retaliate against a witness.
That plea deal called for Conn to be sentenced to the maximum term of five years on each count, for a total of 15 years. That was to be added to Conn’s initial 12-year sentence, for a total of 27 years.
There is no parole in the federal court system, but inmates can cut their sentences by up to 15 percent for good conduct.
If Conn receives all that credit, it would reduce his sentence to 23 years. He has served about 10 months of that because he’s been in jail since December.
Conn was once of the most prolific Social Security disability lawyers in the nation, handling successful benefits claims for thousands of people, many of them in Eastern Kentucky, where the disability rate is well above the national level.
The government paid Conn’s firm $23 million in fees between 2005 and 2015, an FBI agent testified at one point.
Conn admitted last year, however, that he used fraudulent evidence in clients’ claims and paid kickbacks totaling more than $600,000 to David B. Daugherty, a Social Security judge who issued blanket approvals for Conn’s clients for years.
The claims would have obligated Social Security to pay more than $600 million in lifetime benefits if it hadn’t come to light, federal officials have said.
Daugherty also pleaded guilty as part of a deal for a four-year sentence.
Reeves sentenced Alfred Bradley Adkins, a psychologist convicted of signing fraudulent forms for Conn with little scrutiny in many cases, to 25 years in prison.
Two others were convicted in connection with Conn as well — Charlie Paul Andrus, a one-time Social Security judge who worked with Conn to try to discredit a whistleblower in the agency, and Curtis Lee Wyatt, a former employee of Conn’s who helped him escape.
By Bill Estep
Lexington Herald-Leader
