Deaf Man Convicted in Largest Individual Social Security Fraud : Courts: Jurors reject his contention that he accumulated nearly $500,000 to protest poor treatment of people with hearing disabilities.

After less than three hours of deliberation, a federal jury on Friday convicted Robert L. Chesney, 60, a miserly deaf man, of using numerous fake ID cards to pull off what authorities described as the biggest individual Social Security fraud in U.S. history.

In finding Chesney guilty of filing false claims, conversion of federal funds, and money laundering, the jury apparently rejected Chesney’s contention that he had taken the money as part of a one-man crusade to “wake up” the federal government to the needs of the deaf.

A short, balding man who followed his trial intently through sign language interpreters, Chesney looked down at the table as guilty verdicts were delivered on each of 20 counts. He made no comment as he was led out of the courtroom, past a handful of deaf observers.

Asked earlier whether he was disappointed that the deaf community had not rallied behind him, Chesney wrote, “I am more concerned of the effect on the public in general rather than the deaf community, which is too small to be of any effect.” He acknowledged that he had never before joined in protests for the deaf.

Chesney, the only defense witness in the three-day trial, freely admitted assuming dozens of identities in a “silent protest.” He testified that he had originally hoped to accumulate $10 million in Social Security funds before making his protest public. Instead, he managed to accumulate less than $500,000 before being caught.

His attorney, Deputy Public Defender Amy Karlin, stressed that he had never spent a cent of the money, putting it instead into interest-bearing accounts as a “fiduciary” for the federal government. The prosecutor noted that he had spent little of his own money, hoarding it for reasons Chesney has never revealed.

In closing arguments Friday morning, Karlin noted that Chesney had carefully researched his actions, adopting identities of actual people who, for one reason or other, could not be hurt when he applied for benefits in their names. Most of the people whose identities he assumed were dead.

When she said Chesney’s protest was conceived in the spirit of Martin Luther King Jr., Middleton responded passionately in his closing rebuttal that there was no comparison.

“Didn’t Dr. Martin Luther King go to jail time and time again?” he asked the jury. “But Mr. Chesney is not Martin Luther King. Mr. Chesney is a crook.”

Until his arrest in July, Chesney had appeared to be simply one of the hundreds of elderly or disabled residents at the federally subsidized Angelus Plaza downtown who lived from one government check to another.

Found in his apartment, however, were more than a dozen hats ranging from baseball caps to a beret that the balding Chesney had apparently used as disguises in assembling false identities under which he filed for Social Security claims and other benefits.

Investigators also discovered 15 boxes and three steamer trunks full of birth certificates, bank statements and Social Security cards--in addition to more than 200 California Department of Motor Vehicles ID cards, each bearing Chesney’s picture and someone else’s name. For each identity, there was a separate envelope with separate photo, IDs and bank records.

Born in Texas, a poor child who became deaf at the age of 10 after a bout with spinal meningitis, Chesney was bright enough to go through school on scholarships and graduate from the prestigious Gallaudet University, the world’s only liberal arts university for the deaf. Classmates said he had great promise and often talked of becoming a rich man.

However, Chesney found himself relegated to a traditional career for the deaf in typesetting. Colleagues said he seemed to be bitterly affected by discrimination against the deaf that others learned to cope with. A loner and notorious miser, he lived a Spartan life and began to accumulate large savings accounts. When one co-worker asked him what he was hoarding money for, he responded, “to make a bigger wad.”

In 1982, he represented himself in an employment discrimination suit against the Long Beach Press-Telegram and received a lucrative settlement. However, he failed to disclose that settlement when applying for disability benefits and subsidized housing.

Seven years ago, he testified, a voice told him to turn on the television, and he saw a news story about a woman dubbed the “welfare queen.” At that point, he said, he decided to use similar methods of taking money from the government as a protest.

The same voice led him to the public library, he testified, where he began researching dead people and writing for copies of their birth certificates. He later used those certificates to obtain California driver’s licenses and, ultimately, disability benefits.

Karlin said she plans to appeal the verdict. Sentencing was scheduled for Feb. 17. He also faces a civil trial under which more than $1 million in funds, including his own savings, could be forfeited to pay civil damages.