A Fargo, North Dakota, man has pleaded guilty to stealing $52,176 in Social Security Disability Insurance benefits that belonged to a dead relative. Zachary Paul Femling, 34, admitted to theft of government property in federal court, and sentencing is set for January 11, 2027.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of North Dakota said in its announcement of the plea that Femling falsely obtained his deceased relative’s Social Security Administration Disability Insurance Benefits. The payments covered the period from August 10, 2021, to January 31, 2026, a stretch of more than four years. The theft ended there, and the plea followed.
What Femling admitted
The charge is theft of government property, the offense prosecutors use when someone keeps federal payments that were never theirs to receive. Femling pleaded guilty to it, which means the question in the case is now the sentence, not whether the theft happened. The hearing is scheduled for 9:00 a.m. on January 11, 2027, in Bismarck. The Social Security Administration’s Office of the Inspector General is the agency that handles this kind of case, according to the agency’s own fraud reporting page, which lists misusing a Social Security number or Social Security benefits among the conduct it wants reported.
The announcement describes the relative only as deceased. The benefit at issue was disability insurance, paid to workers who can no longer work, and not a retirement check. When the person who receives such payments dies, the benefit is owed to no one, and any deposit that keeps arriving afterward belongs to the government.
For families, the practical question is a plain one: when a relative on Social Security dies, who tells the agency, and what happens to the payment that arrives afterward? The answer decides whether a death leads to a clean end of benefits or to a repayment demand later.
The Social Security Check Protection Kit includes a first-week checklist for when a spouse dies, including not spending the payment for the month of death, a step that matters in a case where $52,176 kept flowing to the wrong person.
See the first-week checklist for the payment after a death →
What Social Security says must be returned
Social Security’s rule on payments after a death is stated in its booklet on what to do when someone dies. If the deceased was receiving Social Security benefits, the booklet says, the benefits received for the month of death and any later months must be returned.
The same booklet says the funeral director usually reports the person’s death to the agency, and it advises giving the funeral director the deceased person’s Social Security number for that purpose. Social Security’s page on what to do when someone dies says the same thing in other words: funeral homes generally tell the agency when someone dies.
That default has a limit. Not every death goes through a funeral home, and a family that handles arrangements on its own cannot assume the report has been made. In those cases the agency says to call and provide the name, Social Security number, date of birth and date of death. The number is 1-800-772-1213.
Why the months matter
In the Femling case, the dates are the heart of the matter. The payments ran for more than four years, from August 2021 to January 2026. That is a long time for deposits to continue without the agency learning that the beneficiary had died, and it explains how the total reached $52,176.
For a family, the lesson is more ordinary. A deposit that arrives after a death is not a windfall and not a clerical oddity to be set aside. It is a payment the government will ask to have back. Leaving it untouched, and telling the agency promptly, keeps a small timing problem from turning into either a repayment demand or, in the worst case, an investigation.
Reporting a death and handling the month-of-death payment
The free route starts with the funeral director, who usually makes the report, and with Social Security itself. The agency’s survivors benefits page is the place to see what a surviving spouse or child may be able to receive, a separate question from the dead person’s own payments.
Families should gather the deceased person’s name, Social Security number, date of birth and date of death before calling 1-800-772-1213. Bank statements are worth a look as well, to see whether a Social Security deposit has arrived for the month of death or any month after. Those are the payments the booklet says must go back, and setting them aside rather than spending them is the safe course until the agency says how it wants them returned.
Anyone who believes someone else is collecting a dead person’s benefits can report it to the inspector general through the fraud page linked above.
The Social Security Check Protection Kit pairs the 2026 payment calendar with a checklist of what to do in the first week after a death, so a family can see which deposits are due and hold back the one for the month of death.
Click here to get The Social Security Check Protection Kit for a relative’s death →
This article was produced with AI assistance and reviewed by The Financial Wire’s editorial team.
David M. Keller is a finance writer based in Columbus, Ohio, covering personal finance and consumer-focused economic topics. He earned his degree in journalism from Ohio University and began his career reporting on local business and economic trends for a regional media outlet. Since then, he has contributed to a variety of online publications, focusing on clear, practical coverage of topics such as cost of living, debt, and everyday financial decision-making.
