A Trans Woman in Portland Was Just Convicted of Stealing Social Security by Collecting It Under Her Male Identity

Read: The Bureaucracy of Gender Transitioning

According to a report in The Oregonion, a trans woman in Portland was convicted of fraud today for using her old identity—from before she transitioned to female—in order to bilk the Social Security Administration out of almost $250,000. Richelle Dee McDonald was sentenced to eight months of house arrest, and, according to The AP, will have to give the money back.

McDonald was born in 1945, and received a Social Security card sometime in the early 1960s under the name Richard McDonald. In 1972, however, she obtained a second Social Security card, this time as Richelle. Richelle claimed she had never received a Social Security card in the first place.

When she was hit by a bus sometime around 1974 and suffered a debilitating arm injury, she qualified for Supplemental Social Security—but she collected it as Richard. In the decades that followed, she did things to maintain the identity of Richard. For instance, she made sure he had a driver's license. But, despite the arm injury, she worked as a janitor at a hospital for almost 25 years. When Richelle retired, she attempted to collect Social Security, and that was when the whole thing unraveled.

A Social Security official noticed the connection between Richard and Richelle, and sniffed around. In May of last year, Richelle was hit with a summons, and in December she pled guilty on charges of wire fraud, stealing from the government, and Social Security fraud.

McDonald's crime is a riff on the practice of "ghosting," a kind of identity theft where the thief takes a dead person's ID, and uses it for fun and profit. But this particular ghost didn't die. At transition he theoretically should have ceased to exist at all. Since transition leaves a huge number of bureaucratic loose ends, like an outdated birth certificate, and inconsistent IDs, it's a wonder this kind of thing doesn't crop up in the news more often.

In any case, McDonald dodged prison in part because the federal judge in her case, Marco A. Hernandez, recognized how rough things were for her when she was younger. The prosecutor, Helen Cooper, recommended against prison time anyway, citing the expense of dealing with an elderly inmate who suffers from seizures. Instead, they'll get their money back.

So far she's paid $30,000, and the government hopes that even though she's 70-years-old, McDonald will live long enough to fork over the other $220,000 or so. The Oregonian says that'll take about another 20 years.

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