A 69-year-old Wellington woman faces sentencing this morning for bilking funds meant to compensate coal miners for black lung disease.
Although Iris Shanks received more than $92,000 over nearly two decades, her
lawyer said in legal pleadings that she lived for most of those years in a house without electricity or running water.
Shanks pleaded guilty this spring to making a false claim to the federal government. Shanks said she continued to collect funds from the U.S. Department of Labor’s Coal Miners Compensation fund meant for her mother, who died in 1989. Shanks’ father was a coal miner who died of black lung disease in 1977. But Shanks said she kept collecting the money for 16 years after her mother’s death. Authorities learned of the scam after she opened a bank account in her mother’s name in 2005, using a U.S. Treasury check.
Federal sentencing guidelines suggest Shanks receive up to five years in prison. But federal public defender David Freund is asking U.S. Senior Judge Wesley Brown to give Shanks probation. Freund said in a court brief that Shanks recently moved into an assisted living residence. She uses a walker to get around and has multiple medical problems. She does not own a car and can’t leave the assisted living community without special permission.
“Probation in the present case would arguably be as restrictive as any Bureau of Prisons facility,” Freund wrote.
Update: Judge Brown gave Shanks one year of probation.