New documentary on Eric Conn will focus on real victims of his Social Security scams

On May 5, a four-part documentary entitled “The Big Conn” will be released nationally and internationally on Apple TV. The first two hours premiered last month in Austin and will premiere in Los Angeles on May 3.

If you read the news stories announcing the premieres you might come away with the erroneous belief that you are going to learn to know more than you need to know about our local embarrassment here in Floyd County — Eric Conn. Conn is simultaneously an interesting and, in my view, a despicable character. Conn is currently serving a richly deserved 27-year sentence for his Social Security scheming which has dominated the coverage.

The more important and less told story is what has become of the 3,800 former Conn clients whose lives were turned upside down as a result of his antics?

Yes, Conn is part of the four-hour documentary — but more significantly the documentary tells the full and more important story — how has the totally innocent former clients of Conn have been treated ?

If you have been reading the publicity about Conn you would likely come away with the belief that the late Oklahoma Senator Tom Coburn was right when he was quoted as saying “The claimants in this case were not innocent. They knew a scam was going on.”

Looking back I wish we had sued Coburn for defamation. The whopper of a lie that he told — that Conn had thousands of co-conspirators— changed the course of history. The truth is that there is zero evidence of any former Conn client having any wrongful involvement. In fact you would be hard pressed to find a single Conn client who ever met the elusive Conn. The SSA in court filings has grudgingly acknowledged the Conn clients are innocent. You won’t find that in the press coverage.

Instead for the last seven years we have been involved in hand to hand continuous legal combat with the SSA who continues to breathe life into the big lie that Coburn started. His lie set in motion mass hearings conducted by the SSA in which thousands have either lost or been threatened with losing their benefits.

This is same agency that FDR envisioned as being there to erect a safety net to protect the least among us. The truth is the agency has been hijacked by cruel bureaucrats who are indifferent to the humanitarian crisis they sparked here in Appalachia. They have terrorized our innocent neighbors into suicides, attempted suicides and caused mass despair.

For seven years my neighbors have been fearful to open their mail because it might be another letter from the SSA threatening to take away their desperately needed subsistence benefits.

Will the documentary finally set the record straight and finally bring some relief to my beleaguered neighbors?

We will soon find out.

Ned Pillersdorf is an attorney in Eastern Kentucky who represents many of Eric Conn’s victims.

This story was originally published April 22, 2022 at 11:13 AM.