Rosie Costello, 46, admitted in U.S. District Court that she collected more than $280,000 in benefits, beginning in the mid-1980s by having her two children fake retardation starting when they were 4 and 8 years old.

Her now grown son, Pete, 26, pleaded guilty earlier this month. Federal prosecutors in Seattle said Monday authorities had not yet located her daughter, Marie but she should be easy to find.

According to the plea agreement, Costello began coaching her daughter at age 4, and later used the same ruse with her son. He feigned retardation into his mid-20s _ picking at his face, slouching and appearing uncommunicative in meetings with Social Security officials.

Social Security workers became suspicious and uncovered a video of Pete Costello ably contesting a traffic ticket in a Vancouver courtroom.

This qualifies as seriously bad parenting but at some point (like as teens) the kids are responsible for their actions. It also shows the laxity at which the government handles these types of programs. Unless the kids acted like retards in school and were being treated for it as well, it appears that this is a stunningly easy ruse to pull off. How many more people are doing it?

tags: bad parenting

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 1st, 2007 at 11:53 am by Insider and is filed under Loons. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.