Wife poses as missing husband for 13 years to get $350K in benefits, TN officials say

After a woman’s husband disappeared in 2010, she spent the next 13 years pretending to be him to fraudulently collect hundreds of thousands of dollars of his government benefits, Tennessee investigators said.

Amy Anglea was indicted on destruction, tampering or fabrication of a government record, theft of property over $250,000, identity theft and forgery, the Tennessee Comptroller of the Treasury said Feb. 14.

According to Nashville cold case records, 54-year-old Charles Anglea left home on his motorcycle in July 2010 and was never heard from again. He was expected to be taking a roughly 200-mile trip from Nashville east to Pigeon Forge on the other side of the state, but his bike was later found abandoned in Bedford County, about 60 miles south of his last known location.

Before retiring, he chose the regular pension benefit plan with no survivor benefit, which he would receive for the rest of his life as long as he filled out an earnings form every year, according to the investigative report.

But after he went missing, his wife began forging those documents so the money would still come in, investigators said. She signed his name on various forms over the next decade, including one form to change her husband’s home address when she couldn’t do so by calling.

In addition to the pension benefits, she received health insurance benefits from her husband’s plan, which investigators say should have been suspended after he disappeared.

In total, she received over $350,000 in fraudulent benefits from the state from 2011 to 2023, investigators said.

Anglea was indicted on Feb. 3 in Humphreys County, about a 75-mile drive west from Nashville.

This story was originally published February 18, 2025 at 2:17 PM with the headline "Wife poses as missing husband for 13 years to get $350K in benefits, TN officials say."