Bellevue Taco Bell owner hid mom’s death for decades to steal benefits Fraud faces six months in jail after bilking Social Security, state pension plan

UPDATE: Raymond O'Dell was sentenced Monday to six months in federal prison followed by six months of home detention, and ordered to pay $188,436 in restitution and a $20,000 fine.

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A Bellevue fast food entrepreneur caught collecting Social Security benefits meant for his dead mother faces six months in jail.

Taco Bell franchise owner of Raymond C. O’Dell stole nearly $200,000 in benefits by hiding his mother’s death from the government for 23 years. O’Dell, 70, was found out after a Social Security worker asked to speak with his long-dead mother and ultimately pleaded guilty to federal charges.

O’Dell also bilked the Ohio state pension system by continuing to draw his mother’s pension payments after her death in November 1989. He stole $100,000 from the Ohio Public Employees Retirement System over the years, and is expected to plead guilty to those thefts later in January.

Prosecutors in Seattle note that O’Dell continued stealing from the social services while amassing millions. O’Dell’s accountant puts his net worth just shy of $4 million; about $431,000 of that was in cash.

Asking that O’Dell be sentenced to six months in federal detention followed by six months under house arrest, Special Assistant U.S. Attorney Seth Wilkinson said the money O’Dell stole was meant to help widows, orphans and the elderly.

Instead, it went to a man with considerable means. While his attorney claims O’Dell was nearly broke when the thefts began, he continued stealing from Social Security as a multi-millionaire.

“Social Security fraud cases often involve genuinely impoverished persons who steal to improve an otherwise desperate existence,” Wilkinson said in court papers. “While those circumstances do not excuse theft from social programs, they mitigate the crime.

“Here, however, (O’Dell) has had a lucrative business career as the owner of fast food restaurants and real estate.”

O’Dell claims his mother’s death coincided with a string of financial disasters and health problems. Writing the court, his attorney said O’Dell was in a dire situation when he made the “fateful decision” to start stealing. After that, he had no way to back off the thefts without exposing himself as a fraud.

“While none of this is offered to excuse or attempt to justify Mr. O’Dell’s crime, it simply describes a desperate, but good man, who saw an opportunity to provide for his family’s health in 1989, when he was at his lowest point, and took it,” defense attorney Laurence Finegold said in a memo to the court. “Like making a deal with the devil, however, once that decision was made there was no way out for Mr. O’Dell.”

In the years since, O'Dell bought and operated Taco Bell franchises in the Seattle area. He and his wife recently moved to Arizona, where they hoped to retire.

Finegold went on to claim O’Dell and his wife of 42 years will have drained their accounts by the time O’Dell repays the money he stole. Compounding his troubles, O’Dell will likely be unable to draw Social Security due to the fraud.

Through his attorney, O’Dell asked that he be spared a jail sentence and instead serve 120 days under house arrest, as well as 200 hours of community service. Finegold pointed to his client’s declining health as a key argument for leniency in his case.

Wilkinson, though, argued decades of theft from a government program for the needy demand jail time. That O’Dell avoided getting caught until he was elderly, the prosecutor said in court papers, shouldn’t allow him to avoid time in custody.

“Workers, taxpayers, and beneficiaries of Social Security programs are all rightly outraged by theft of this scale from the Social Security trust fund. The community needs to see that theft of public money on this scale results in prison time proportionate to the scale of the theft.

O’Dell is scheduled to be sentenced Monday by U.S. District Judge James Robart. He is not currently in custody.

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Seattlepi.com reporter Levi Pulkkinen can be reached at 206-448-8348 or levipulkkinen@seattlepi.com. Follow Levi on Twitter at twitter.com/levipulk.