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Former Brattleboro Resident Sentenced to Prison for Social Security Fraud

August 21, 2024

From the U.S. Attorney’s Office, District of Vermont

Burlington, Vermont – The United States Attorney’s Office announced that Ella Mae Woods, 76, a former Brattleboro resident who recently has been living in Iowa, was sentenced today in United States District Court in Rutland to twelve months and one day of imprisonment following her May 2024 guilty plea to a charge of wire fraud. Visiting U.S. District Judge Mae D’Agostino from the Northern District of New York ordered that Woods serve a one-year term of supervised release upon completion of her prison term and pay restitution in the amount of $328,000. Woods has been incarcerated since she was found to be in violation of the conditions of her pre-trial release in April.

In September 2022, a federal grand jury returned a two-count indictment charging Woods with wire fraud and theft of government money. The indictment charged Woods with misappropriating her mother’s Social Security benefit payments for about 28 years after her mother died. Woods’ mother, Jeannette Styles, died in Brattleboro in early 1994. At the time of her death, Styles was receiving monthly Social Security benefit payments and those payments should have stopped upon Styles’ death. The Social Security Administration, however, did not learn of Styles’ death until about 2022 and between 1994 and 2022 SSA continued to send payments to Styles. Woods fraudulently converted the payments to Styles for her own benefit. As part of the scheme, Woods twice opened bank accounts in her mother’s name, years after her death, in one case forging Styles’ signature on account-opening documents. Altogether, Woods misappropriated $328,000 in SSA payments.

U.S. Attorney Nikolas P. Kerest commends the Office of the Inspector General for the Social Security Administration for its investigation of this case.

Woods is represented by Federal Public Defender Michael Desautels. The prosecutors are Assistant U.S. Attorneys Gregory Waples and Thomas Aliberti.

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