Pennsylvania scammer rumbled following grim discovery of her grandmother’s stored remains 15 years after the senior died.
Cynthia Black (York County Sheriffs Office)
Cases of fraudsters who continue to collect the benefits of dead relatives are sadly not uncommon. Take Florida’s Richard Greenberg, who cashed his mother’s social security checks for a full fifteen years after her passing until his arrest last November.
But if dishonest profiteering alone is bad enough, measures taken by scammers to evade detection can be far more disturbing.
Certainly, the actions of a Pennsylvania woman who allegedly stored her grandmother’s body in a freezer in order to collect her social security checks are macabre to say the least.
Cynthia Black, 61, was arrested and charged Wednesday after fraudulently receiving more than $186,000 in social security payments intended for her dead grandmother.
Black told police during a yearlong investigation that her grandmother, Glenora Delahay, died at their home in March 2004 at the age of 97.
At the time of her death, Delahay was sharing her home in Ardmore, Pennsylvania, with her granddaughter and 55-year-old Glenn Black Jr.
It’s not clear how Delahay died, although police are not treating her death as suspicious.
Cynthia Black told investigators that she carried her grandmother’s body to the basement and stored it in a freezer because she needed the senior’s social security income.
Records show that Delahay received benefits from 2001 to November 2010, when her account was finally suspended, according to a probable cause affidavit obtained by The Philadelphia Inquirer.
The funds were transferred each month into a joint account held by Delahay, her mother, Glenora Waltzinger, who died in 2011, and Cynthia Black.
Cynthia and Glenn Black bought a home in Dillsburg in 2007, using the stolen security benefits to help pay the mortgage.
After losing the home to foreclosure in 2018, Cynthia moved away while Glenn ended up behind bars for an unrelated indecent assault charge.
The fraud may have remained undetected, were it not for the duo’s lack of thoroughness in packing up their belongings. They allegedly left behind something important: Delahay’s stashed corpse.
In February 2019, two women viewing the foreclosed property discovered human remains wrapped in a trash bag in a freezer in a small building next to the home. DNA testing revealed that the remains belonged to Delahay.
Cynthia Black was charged with abuse of corpse, theft, and receiving stolen property, with bail set at $50,000 unsecured.
It is not clear whether charges will be brought against Glenn Black.
A preliminary hearing is set for June 10.
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