Welfare fraud mom, in tears, draws 2-6

PHOTOGRAPHER: Justin Mason

Angela Lopez blamed her former defense attorney and prosecutors, saying they coerced her into accepting a plea agreement with jail time instead of taking her case to trial.

With tears in her eyes and claiming to be more than six months pregnant, the 37-year-old Colonie mother of five wasn’t short on reasons why acting Supreme Court Justice Dan Lamont should allow her to withdraw her May guilty plea to the charges of welfare fraud and grand larceny. Professing her innocence, she said the prosecution railroaded her into a plea agreement that defense attorney David Brickman wouldn’t reject because “he was worried about his credibility with the district attorney.”

“I felt so pressured into pleading guilty that day,” she said prior to her sentencing in Albany County Court on Friday, “I felt betrayed and definitely pressured.”

Lamont wasn’t swayed by her show of emotion or her argument. He rejected her request and then sentenced Lopez to serve two to six years in state prison, in accord with the plea agreement she reached with Assistant District Attorney Ben Clark of the county’s financial crimes unit.

In addition to incarceration, Lopez must pay restitution of $65,599 to Albany County’s Department of Social Services and $29,697 to the Social Security Administration. She was also assessed more than $5,000 in surcharges.

The prison sentence was significantly less than the 20 years Lopez could have faced if she had been found guilty of all 19 counts in the original indictment. But it is much harsher than the six-month sentence suggested in her pre-sentencing investigation.

Lopez was accused of wrongfully obtaining more than $95,000 in welfare benefits over a five-year period ending in 2009. She stirred local ire when television cameras filmed her leaving her arraignment in an expensive-looking pinstripe suit and driving away in a newer-model Lincoln Navigator.

In contrast, Lopez was dressed down in court Friday. She was led away in handcuffs immediately after Lamont sentenced her.

In her initial plea, Lopez agreed not to appeal her conviction. She can, however, appeal Lamont’s decision preventing her from withdrawing the plea and said she would.

On paper, Lopez appeared to be a hardship case on a shoestring income. She was supporting five children and her out-of-work husband and reported suffering a lingering back injury that kept her unemployed.

But she was actually earning substantial under-the-table wages while working as a home health aide, a job that required the type of lifting she wouldn’t be able to perform with the disability she reported. She also failed to acknowledge two homes owned by her family — one in Colonie’s middle-income Vanessa Court neighborhood and another in Florida.

Lopez later told investigators she didn’t realize she needed to disclose the homes or report the tens of thousands of dollars maintained in bank accounts for her children. She said her husband was an out-of-work contractor and that she thought her income was beneath the threshold for public assistance.

Over a five-year period, she received benefits from Medicaid, food stamps and Social Security. Prosecutors contended she supported her family with the benefits, while fueling an upscale lifestyle with money she earned from her job.

In court, Lopez appeared stunned that she wasn’t allowed to withdraw her plea and even more shocked that her sentencing would go on as scheduled. Her scheduled date for sentencing was pushed back on two occasions to allow her to secure a new lawyer and develop arguments for withdrawing her plea.

When asked if she wanted to speak before the sentencing, Lopez delivered a rambling and somewhat disjointed statement in which she professed a need to be near her five children, ages 1 to 19. She denied that she lived a lavish lifestyle, insisting she never earned more than $2,200 a month while collecting benefits.

“I’m far from wealthy” she said through tears. “I wish they could see that.”