Nov 8, 2018 3 min read

A Greene County woman who pleaded guilty to illegally receiving more than $115,000 in Social Security disability payments for nearly two decades was sentenced in federal court Wednesday and will serve a year of house arrest.

Cindy Hancheck must also repay the $115,597 in supplemental benefits she fraudulently received and will spend four years on probation under the sentence imposed by U.S. District Judge David Cercone in federal court in Pittsburgh.

Hancheck, 62, of Cumberland Township, pleaded guilty April 24 to one count of Social Security fraud after federal investigators said she received the supplemental benefits from 1999 to 2016 after falsely claiming her husband had left their home and was no longer supporting her financially.

She was indicted on federal charges in June 2017 and accused of lying to the Social Security Administration that she did not know where her husband, Joseph Hancheck, was living, despite him continuing to reside at her home. Her husband supported her financially, federal investigators said, and the couple used joint bank accounts. She made a series of false statements on government forms beginning in July 1999 and continued to receive the benefits until February 2016, investigators said.

Court documents indicate the couple had been married since 1996 and lived together the entire time except for a “brief period” in 2014. In 2001 and 2002, Cindy Hancheck secured an increase to her benefits after fraudulently claiming her “purportedly absent” husband was charging her $200 per month in rent, prosecutors wrote in court documents. Joseph Hancheck has not been charged.

“Other factual details also make this case more serious than usual situations of program fraud,” prosecutors wrote in the government’s sentencing request. “Rather than lying or staying silent to maintain a pre-existing flow of Social Security benefits, (Hancheck) initiated the receipt of benefits that she was not entitled to receive in the first place.”

Federal prosecutors acknowledged Hancheck “has faced significant medical issues” that created problems with the couple’s income, and she committed the fraud to “secure important health treatments” for undisclosed illnesses.

“But, sadly, many other Western Pennsylvania families of limited means have been confronted with major medical expenses, and yet most of them have not committed Social Security fraud – let alone on the scale of Ms. Hancheck,” prosecutors said. “Social Security fraud effectively reduces the benefits available to disabled people who, unlike Ms. Hancheck, are truly left without a working spouse or other family member to support them.”

Prosecutors asked for Hancheck to be sentenced to prison, adding her guilty plea and sentencing should deter others from committing Social Security fraud.

However, Leon Parker, her court-appointed attorney, successfully argued Hancheck should be sentenced to home confinement because of myriad health problems.

An additional charge of theft of government money was withdrawn as part of her guilty plea. Assistant U.S. Attorney Adam Hallowell prosecuted the case.