Canadian man sentenced to 2 1/2 years over U.S. Social Security fraud

The United States Attorney’s Office in Alaska says a Canadian man has been sentenced to 2 1/2 years in prison and ordered to repay $420,000 he stole in social security benefits from the U.S. government over a 30-year period.It says 77-year-old Ellis Kingsep was legally living in the United States and had devised “an elaborate scheme” where he collected benefits payments that were sent by the Social Security Administration intended for his mother.It says the scheme included “an intricate web of mail forwarding requests for his mother’s mail by using private postal mailbox accounts” in California, Vancouver and Alaska to conceal that he was receiving his mother’s mail and sending correspondence in her name.