A federal judge sentenced a Griffith woman to three years probation, including eight months on house arrest on Wednesday after she pleaded guilty to defrauding $175,000 from the U.S. Social Security Administration.
Surina Curry, 43, pleaded guilty in September to Social Security fraud. She faced up to 14 months under the plea deal.
Federal prosecutors accused her of falsifying documents from 2019 to 2024 to maximize benefits she didn’t qualify for.
Yet, U.S. District Judge Gretchen Lund said early in the hearing she didn’t intend to send Curry to prison.
Defense lawyer Roxanne Mendez Johnson said Curry had legitimately qualified for Social Security since age 12 due to a disability and never had a job. But, increasingly, even as she was married, it became more difficult to support her three sons.
“She understands poverty is hard,” the lawyer said. “It was not a good enough reason.”
The case would have profound consequences – Curry is ordered to repay $175,000 and will be cut off from future benefits. She now works as a ride-share driver to support herself and gradually plans repay the government.
“It was a lesson learned for me,” Curry said in court.
It wasn’t a “one-time slip up,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Francis Sohn said, who like Mendez Johnson, asked for Curry to avoid prison. He later noted she wasn’t going to be able to defraud the agency again. Later in the hearing, he suggested granting her the ability to go to Illinois so she could make more money taking passengers to Chicago airports.
Lund issued her sentence, noting a crime of “necessity,” saying Curry, a first-time offender, was trying to support her children and pay for her home.
Court records show Curry falsely told Social Security, in 2021, that one child didn’t live there, or her husband didn’t live there and she didn’t know how to find him.
Curry provided a fake lease in 2022 when she and her husband owned the home.
