Daughter charged with stealing dad’s benefits after burying him in backyard

Two days before Father’s Day, an Ocala woman was indicted Friday for stealing her dad’s Social Security benefits after not reporting his death and burying him in the backyard of his Eustis area home in 2011, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said.

Susan Marie Kort, 61, confessed to the Lake County Sheriff’s Office alongside her sister last fall that she buried the 89-year-old Merlin Kort after he suffered an apparent stroke and heart attack, said deputies, who passed the case to federal authorities.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office is seeking repayment of $35,577, the same amount she collected from her father’s Social Security benefits, said William Daniels, a U.S. Attorney’s Office spokesman. Kort faces up to 10 years in federal prison if convicted.

“Kort’s elderly father passed away at his Lake County residence in approximately November 2011,” Daniels said. “She then used a power of attorney for her father’s financial affairs to withdraw and spend the … benefit payments.”

The payments were suspended in December 2013 after the Social Security Administration was unable to contact Merlin Kort.

Merlin Kort was reported missing last July by his brother, Paul Kort, who lived in Indiana, according to a Sheriff’s Office report.

Paul Kort “stated that when he last heard, Merlin was in a wheelchair and having heart issues,” the report said.

The brother told deputies he had been trying to contact Merlin Kort for nine years, but his nieces would “give him the run around as to what Merlin was doing or where he was,” the report said.

Merlin Kort was found wrapped in a blue tarp in a grave several feet deep behind the home on Parkcrest Drive, which is west of County Road 439 and north of County Road 44A, the report said.

The “memorial area” was grassy with few potted plants and surrounded by a white metal fence, the report said.

No fractures or wounds were found on the body, according to an autopsy report.