Woman to plead guilty to defrauding the state of $398,000

A California woman accused of collecting about $398,000 in state disability payments on behalf of her dead father for 21 years is scheduled to plead guilty next month.

A?federal grand jury indicted Lynsie Katherine Williams, 57, of Redlands, Calif., last month on a mail fraud charge accusing her of collecting the payments from 1990 until last year.

The payments, the indictment said, were supposed to be for her father, Edwin David Callison, who worked at the Kauai Humane Society for about three years in the 1970s.

In 1976 he was injured on the job and qualified to receive permanent total disability benefits from the state, according to the federal indictment.

He received the payments until he died in 1990, the indictment said.

Williams was her father’s caretaker in the last years of his life but did not notify the state about his death, the indictment said.

She later forged his signature on forms sent to the state attesting that Callison was still alive, according to the charges.

The state payments were sent in the father’s name to a savings account to which Williams had access, the indictment said.

“The defendant used the (permanent total disability) benefits for her own enjoyment,” it said.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Song said Tuesday that the state discovered the fraud in an audit of old cases and turned the case over to federal authorities.

Song said Williams is scheduled to return to Hono­lulu and plead guilty in the case next month.
The hearing is set for Oct. 23 before federal Magistrate Judge Richard Puglisi.

Federal Assistant Public Defender Salina Kanai Alt­hof, Williams’ attorney, could not be reached for comment.