John A. “Tony” Sedgwick was sentenced on August 28, 2017, for illegally taking Social Security payments from the bank account of a dead man. Sedgwick, a co-signee of the man’s account, was sentenced to two years of probation.
Sedgwick, age 66, was sentenced by Santa Cruz County Superior Court Judge Thomas Fink of after he pleaded guilty to one count of theft, a Class 6 undesignated felony.
Judge Fink ordered Sedgwick to also pay $27,037 in restitution to the Social Security Administration, complete 40 hours of community service, and attend a “Thinking for a Change” class.
Sedgwick wrote a letter to the judge in which he claimed that he met the owner of the bank account more than 50 years ago when the man came to work at his fathers’ ranch. “In April of 2014, I took the balance of $7,850 out of the account for myself,” Sedgwick wrote. “I have thought long and hard about what I did and I am truly sorry for my behavior, which was illegal and wrong.”
The man eventually moved back to Costa Rica, and supposedly asked Sedgwick to be a signer on his bank account.
According to the Nogales International, “Sedgwick is a lawyer himself, a fact noted in his pre-sentence report. ‘He told me that he never thought he would be saying what all his clients would tell him in all his years of practicing law: ‘Se me hizo fácil,’ wrote the probation officer who conducted the pre-sentencing interview. “Translated in English, ‘I thought it was easy.’”