Psychologist sentenced to 25 years for signing disability forms he never reviewed
Alfred Bradley Adkins, a clinical psychologist from Shelbiana, Kentucky, performed perfunctory evaluations of disability claimants referred to him by attorney Eric Conn and signed medical evaluation forms Conn's office had already filled out, without reviewing them first, even though the claimants were not necessarily disabled. Conn forwarded the forms to the Social Security Administration, primarily to administrative law judge David B. Daugherty, to support disability findings in a scheme that obligated the SSA to pay more than $550 million in benefits. Conn paid Adkins almost $200,000 for signing the forms. A federal jury convicted Adkins in June 2017 of conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud, mail fraud, wire fraud and making false statements, and he was sentenced in September 2017 to 300 months, 25 years, in prison and ordered to pay more than $93 million in restitution. The Sixth Circuit later affirmed both his conviction and his sentence on appeal.
- Year
- 2017
- Where
- United States
- Outcome
- Sentenced
- Reported loss
- $550.0 million
- Victims
- Not stated in the sources
- Schemes
- Social Security disability fraud mill
- Last reviewed
- 2026-10-22
The facts, as recorded
- Alfred Bradley Adkins, 46, of Shelbiana, Kentucky, was a clinical psychologist who performed evaluations of disability claimants referred to him by attorney Eric Conn.
- Conn asked Adkins to sign medical evaluation forms that Conn's office had already prepared; Adkins signed them without first reviewing them, even though the claimants were not necessarily disabled.
- Conn forwarded the signed forms to the Social Security Administration, primarily to administrative law judge David B. Daugherty, to support disability determinations.
- Conn paid Adkins almost $200,000 for signing the forms.
- The scheme as a whole obligated the SSA to pay more than $550 million in federal disability benefits across thousands of claimants' cases.
- A federal jury in Lexington, Kentucky, found Adkins guilty on June 12, 2017, after a six-day trial, of one count of conspiracy to commit mail fraud and wire fraud, one count of mail fraud, one count of wire fraud, and one count of making false statements.
- US District Judge Danny C. Reeves of the Eastern District of Kentucky sentenced Adkins on September 22, 2017, to 300 months (25 years) in federal prison and ordered him to pay more than $93 million in restitution to the SSA and HHS.
- The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals later affirmed both Adkins's conviction and his sentence.
Why this case matters
Adkins shows the third leg of the scheme: not the attorney who recruited claimants and not the judge who approved them, but the credentialed professional whose signature turned a blank, pre-filled form into something that looked like independent medical evidence. Without a psychologist willing to sign, Conn’s prepared paperwork would have had no clinical weight at all.
A signature standing in for an exam that never happened
The entire value Adkins supplied was his signature, not his judgment. Prosecutors established that he signed evaluation forms Conn’s staff had already completed, describing conditions and conclusions Adkins had not reached through his own examination, for claimants he had not necessarily found to be disabled at all. That is the specific conduct a federal jury convicted him of after a six-day trial.
A sentence the appeal didn’t disturb
Unlike Daugherty’s four-year sentence, which the sentencing judge himself called inadequate, Adkins’s 25-year sentence, the longest imposed on anyone in this scheme, went up on appeal and came back unchanged. The Sixth Circuit affirmed both the conviction and the sentence.
The caveat
Adkins was convicted by a federal jury, not by a guilty plea, and his conviction and sentence have both been affirmed on appeal, so nothing about his case remains open to challenge. The facts above come from the Justice Department’s own account of the trial evidence and the sentence imposed, not from an unresolved accusation.
Sources
- Former Clinical Psychologist Sentenced to 25 Years in Prison for Role in $550 Million Social Security Fraud Scheme. US Department of Justice, Office of Public Affairs (via SSA Office of Inspector General reproduction). Accessed 2026-10-22. Supports: Adkins's age and location, his role evaluating claimants referred by Conn, his signing of pre-prepared forms without review, the almost $200,000 Conn paid him for signing, the $550 million scheme total, his June 12, 2017 jury conviction on conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud, mail fraud, wire fraud and false statements, his September 22, 2017 sentence of 300 months and over $93 million restitution, and the Sixth Circuit's affirmance of his conviction and sentence on appeal.