What the Judge Ate for Breakfast

Carol Holt’s husband, Steve Holt, died 13 years after being discharged from the Air Force. As his widow, she was entitled to benefits from the Veterans Administration.

But Holt shouldn’t have kept collecting money after she remarried, prosecutors say, or for children who didn’t belong to the veteran. The 54-year-old Wellington woman pleaded guilty Monday after being charged with “purloining” $82,256 from the VA. Carol Holt remarried in 1998, four years after her husband died from a service-related illness. But the government said she kept collecting money to which she wasn’t entitled.

In 2002, prosecutors say Carol Holt filed a marital status form for the VA, but she neglected to say that she’d been married to someone else the past four years. Last year, she filled out a child support form saying that the VA funds from her deceased husband were being used to support two of his children. But they weren’t really his children.

Holt faces sentencing Sept. 29 before U.S. District Judge Monti Belot.