A Fullerton woman is spending nine months in jail, serving five years of probation and paying $118,000 in restitution after pleading guilty to having received that much in public assistance while falsely claiming she was divorced and not financially supported by her husband, a Los Angeles Airport Police Department officer. Lydia Delrio Montelongo copped this week
to one felony count of medical insurance fraud with a sentencing
enhancement for white collar crime over $100,000.
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If Montelongo fails to live up to the conditions of her sentence imposed Wednesday, she could spend up
to six years in state prison. She was married, unemployed, living with her husband, financially
supported by him and covered by his medical insurance policy at the
time of her crimes, according to the Orange County District Attorney's
office.
The OCDA presented evidence that:
- beginning in December 2004, she applied for and illegally
accepted social security benefits from the Social Security
Administration, for which she did not qualify;
-
beginning in June
2005, she applied for and illegally accepted Medi-Cal
benefits, for which she did not qualify;
-
beginning in June 2008,
she applied for and illegally accepted social services benefits
through In-Home Support Services from the Orange County Social
Services Agency.
Montelongo not only falsely claimed she was divorced when she was not, she claimed she did not know her husband's whereabouts while she was actually living with him, according to the OCDA. No evidence was uncovered that her husband
knew about the fraud.
Her deceit ended when law enforcement received an anonymous top about
her.
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.