Former Social Security judge sentenced for taking $609,000 in bribes to approve disability claims
David Black Daugherty, a Social Security administrative law judge assigned to the agency's Huntington, West Virginia hearing office, spent from 2004 until his 2011 retirement seeking out pending disability cases in which Kentucky attorney Eric Christopher Conn represented the claimant, reassigning those cases to himself, and awarding benefits in every one, in some instances without ever holding a hearing. Conn paid Daugherty roughly $8,000 a month in cash until about April 2011, totaling more than $609,000 for approximately 3,149 decided cases, obligating the Social Security Administration to pay more than $550 million in lifetime benefits. A 2013 Senate subcommittee investigation had already found that Daugherty approved nearly 100% of the cases he considered, against a national average of 62%, years before any criminal charge was filed. Daugherty pleaded guilty in May 2017 to two counts of receiving illegal gratuities and was sentenced in August 2017 to four years in prison and ordered to pay more than $93 million in restitution to the SSA and HHS.
- Year
- 2017
- Where
- United States
- Outcome
- Sentenced
- Reported loss
- $550.0 million
- Victims
- 3,149
- Schemes
- Social Security disability fraud mill
- Last reviewed
- 2026-10-22
The facts, as recorded
- David Black Daugherty, 81, of Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, was an SSA administrative law judge assigned to the agency's hearing office in Huntington, West Virginia.
- Beginning around 2004, Daugherty sought out pending cases in which Kentucky attorney Eric Christopher Conn represented the claimant and reassigned those cases to himself rather than let them be randomly assigned.
- Daugherty contacted Conn about which cases he planned to decide the following month and solicited the medical documentation needed to support a disability finding.
- "Without exception, Daugherty awarded disability benefits to individuals represented by Conn," in some instances without first holding a hearing.
- Conn paid Daugherty approximately $8,000 a month in cash until about April 2011, totaling more than $609,000 for roughly 3,149 cases Daugherty decided.
- The cases Daugherty approved obligated the Social Security Administration to pay more than $550 million in lifetime benefits.
- Daugherty retired from the bench in 2011 after questions were raised about his relationship with Conn, years before any criminal charge followed.
- A Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee staff report released October 7, 2013, titled "How Some Legal, Medical, and Judicial Professionals Abused Social Security Disability Programs: A Case Study of the Conn Law Firm," found Daugherty's approval rate was nearly 100% of the cases he considered, compared with a national average of 62%; neither man had yet been criminally charged at the time of that report.
- Daugherty pleaded guilty in May 2017 to two counts of receiving illegal gratuities.
- US District Judge Danny C. Reeves of the Eastern District of Kentucky sentenced Daugherty on August 25, 2017, to four years in prison and ordered him to pay more than $93 million in restitution to the SSA and HHS.
- Judge Reeves called the four-year sentence a "sweet deal" and said it was "not anywhere near an appropriate punishment" for the scale of the fraud.
Why this case matters
Daugherty is the reason the scheme could run for years without a single rejected claim raising suspicion: he was not an outside accomplice feeding information to Conn, he was the decision-maker himself, and he used an ordinary administrative power, the ability to pull a pending case onto his own docket, to make sure every one of Conn’s clients landed in front of the one judge who had already been paid to approve them.
Caught by a pattern, not a complaint
The first public exposure of this scheme was not a criminal indictment but a 2013 Senate subcommittee report built entirely from approval-rate statistics: a judge saying yes to virtually every case he touched, against a national average of roughly three in five. No single approval in that pattern looked wrong on its own; it took comparing Daugherty’s numbers to everyone else’s to see it.
The caveat
Daugherty pleaded guilty to receiving illegal gratuities and has been sentenced; the facts above describing his conduct, the dollar figures and the case counts come from the Justice Department’s own account of the scheme, which his plea admitted, not from an unresolved accusation. The 2013 Senate subcommittee report is cited here only for the approval-rate statistic and the description of Conn’s office process, both published years before either man was criminally charged, and should not be read as itself a finding of guilt.
Sources
- Former Social Security Administrative Law Judge Sentenced to Four 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: Daugherty's age and location, his role at the Huntington hearing office, the case-reassignment pattern, the 'without exception' quote, the roughly $8,000-a-month cash payments totaling more than $609,000 for about 3,149 cases, the $550 million benefit obligation, his May 2017 guilty plea, his August 25, 2017 sentence of four years and over $93 million restitution, and Judge Reeves's 'sweet deal' quote.
- U.S. Senate report on disability fraud focuses on southern West Virginia and eastern Kentucky. WV MetroNews. Accessed 2026-10-22. Supports: The October 2013 Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee staff report on the Conn law firm, Daugherty's near-100% approval rate against a 62% national average, the 'claim factory' description of Conn's office process, the $2.5 billion total benefits Daugherty signed off on in his final years, the $4.5 million in SSA attorney fees paid to Conn's firm from 2006 to 2010, and the fact that neither man had been criminally charged as of the report's release.