Social Security kept depositing retirement benefits into a bank account for a man who had died, and federal prosecutors in Nevada say his niece used part of the money. A grand jury indicted Sherry Kim Picetti of Reno on one count of theft of government money, and she made her first court appearance on September 23. Her trial is set for December 1, 2026.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Nevada says about $102,728 in benefits was deposited after her uncle’s death, and that Picetti converted at least $15,000 of it for her own use between August 2021 and March 2023. The two numbers measure different things: the first is everything the agency paid into the account after the death, and the second is the portion prosecutors say was taken.
How the payments kept going
According to the Justice Department’s announcement, the Social Security Administration continued to pay retirement benefits because it did not know the man had died. Prosecutors say Picetti did not report the death, and that is the center of the charge. Nothing in the release describes a forged document or a hacked account. The case rests on silence: an agency that pays on a schedule, an account that stayed open and a death nobody told the government about…