Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

Former Las Vegas man gets 4 years for receiving dead father’s VA benefits

A former Las Vegas resident was sentenced to four years in prison and ordered to pay restitution after hiding his father’s death to continue receiving Department of Veterans Affairs disability payments.

Mark Lee Christian, 55, was sentenced Wednesday to 48 months in prison and three years of supervised release. He also was ordered to pay $79,265 in restitution and a $4,000 in fine by Judge Kent J. Dawson, U.S. Attorney Daniel G. Bogden said.

Christian pleaded guilty in January 2009 to theft of government property and making a false statement to a federal agent.

James Thomas Christian, a World War II Navy fighter pilot, suffered from Parkinson’s disease and received monthly disability payments from the VA. In 1997, he gave power of attorney to his son to manage his financial, medical and personal affairs.

The younger Christian’s estranged wife contacted the VA in 2006 suggesting the agency investigate Christian’s receipt of benefits for his father.

In April 2007, Christian told an investigator that his father was alive and denied telling his wife and sister that his father had died in 1999, but later in the same discussion, Christian said that his father died in their Las Vegas apartment due to breathing problems.

Christian said he did not call for help or report the death, but buried his father’s body in a forest in San Bernardino County, Calif. Authorities were able to locate and recover skeletal remains from the site based on Christian’s directions.

The cause of death for the man was officially undetermined, but officials testified that the most likely cause of death was manual strangulation and that the man had suffered a partially healed facial fracture that had not been treated.

After his father’s death, Christian left the country for a time, but continued to receive the disability payments and forged his father’s signature on a VA form in 2007, authorities said.

In August 2010, a California jury acquitted Christian on murder charges.

But at Wednesday’s sentencing for the other charges, the judge said evidence shows the man abused and neglected his father and had stolen government property.

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