HUNTERSVILLE, N.C. ( QUEEN CITY NEWS ) — A couple has pleaded guilty to a “multi-decade scheme” in which they used the identities of two people who died as children nearly 80 years ago, according to United States Attorney Adair Boroughs in South Carolina.
Authorities say 75-year-old Gayle Smith Gay of Huntersville was sentenced in S.C. to five years probation and 240 days of confinement at home after she pleaded guilty to the theft of government funds and making a false statement in a passport application.
According to court documents, Mrs. Gay and her husband, Ivan Buxton Gay, Jr., collected social security benefits using fraudulent identities from 2006 to 2023. Mrs. Gay took on the identity of her sister who died just hours after birth in February 1944.
Officials say Mrs. Gay had her sister’s birth certificate changed in 1977 to say “Catherine Faye Smith” instead of “baby girl Smith”. In 1992, Mrs. Gay then applied for a social security number under Catherine Faye Smith.
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