Mass. social security worker gets prison time for trying to coerce beneficiary into paid sex

A former employee for the Social Security Administration has been sentenced to six months in prison for attempting to coerce a recently-unemployed woman into having sex with him for money. 

Dae Sung Kim, 36, of Auburn, Massachusetts pleaded guilty in February to one count of attempting to induce a person to travel in interstate commerce to engage in prostitution, the office of U.S. Attorney for Massachusetts Leah Foley said in a statement. He was sentenced on Friday to serve six months in prison and five years of supervised release. 

Federal prosecutors said that, in March 2024, Kim handled an in-person visit at the Social Security Administration’s office in Gardner with a woman seeking benefits after losing her job. He referred her to a Social Security office closer to her residence in another state and later called the woman from his cell phone using the number he found in the administration’s computer system. 

Kim told the woman he understood she was in a “difficult situation,” prosecutors said, and suggested that “maybe they could work something out that would benefit them both.”

In text messages to the woman and a call monitored by law enforcement, he clarified that he was proposing to pay her for sex, prosecutors said.

He told the woman to travel to Massachusetts, offering her $100 to have sex in a car in a hotel parking lot. When Kim arrived in the parking lot to meet the woman in October 2024, he was arrested. 

In a statement, U.S. Attorney Leah Foley blasted Kim for attempting to use the woman’s “vulnerability and his privilege” to “purchase access” to her body.

“Public servants are entrusted to assist people, not exploit them,” Foley said. “This was a brazen abuse of power by a federal employee who used his position and access to sensitive information to prey on a vulnerable woman who had just lost her job. This kind of predatory behavior has no place in public service, or anywhere else.”

Dialynn Dwyer is a reporter and editor at Boston.com, covering breaking and local news across Boston and New England.