Millions of Dollars in Stimulus Checks Sent to Dead People  |
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 The latest news confirms that the Social Security Administration has issued stimulus checks to a number of deceased Americans, because, they say, the government didn't know they were dead.
I can understand how SSA might go on automatically issuing payments to people until they get notification of their demise, and possibly some SS fraud is accomplished this way. But some of the dead who received checks this month were never a part of the Social Security system, never applied and never received benefits. One case highlighted in the news is of an American citizen who went to Italy in 1933 and lived there until his death. Not only did he not receive SS benefits, his death was 34 years ago!!! They not only can't keep track of immigration, they can't even keep track of who left the country.
There's not going to be much stimulus to the economy if money is going out to dead people.
Has Government just gotten so big that it can only make big mistakes?
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1.  Adoniah (2679) | 7 months ago |  They make a lot of mistakes at our expense. I remember when they proclaimed my Father dead when I was a kid. It was a mistake. He was very much alive. It took six months to prove he was alive. During that time Social Security froze his accounts and would not let him cash a paycheck or do anything with money. Social Security told his wife to apply for death benefits for us kids. She wouldn't do it because he was standing right there while they were talking to her. They theatened him with jail as an imposter. His company started paying him in cash and just kept records so that when it was all straightend out they could start everything back up again. It was a mess.
Shalom~Adoniah
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 Rollo1 (1551) | 7 months ago | What made them think he was dead? Things should be getting better with computer records, etc., but even with the advantage of computer files and records they still seem to get things very, very wrong.
It's one thing for the SSA to not have had notification of someone's death and think they are still alive, but there has to be some real problem if they declare living people dead. | |
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| 2. clrumfelt (1612) | 7 months ago |  What concerns me is that the checks sent to dead people will never be cashed but that money has to go SOMEWHERE. It is our tax dollars not being accounted for. The people sending out the stimulus checks could have really deep pockets, and we'd never know what happened to the money because there's no accountability.
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| Rollo1 (1551) | 7 months ago | That's true. The problem is that we wouldn't know which checks were issued by mistake unless someone came forward with one of them. Since the SSA didn't know who was dead and who was alive, we can't expect them to compile a list of which checks were issued in error. If they had known, they wouldn't have been issued.
There's no way to account just how many were issued to dead people. I suppose that if they aren't cashed, the money stays in limbo, at least that is the way it used to work when my company issued checks that the payee lost or never cashed. | |
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3.  marcyyyy (285) | 7 months ago |  That's not very good news...I'm hoping that SSA has money enough for the live people, and I'm thinking about when I'm old enough for social security! (I hope I am alive when I'm old enough, but maybe if I'm not, I'll get a check anyhow...) It seems the larger our population, the more these mistakes are gonna happen.
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| Rollo1 (1551) | 7 months ago | None of us can know if there will be any money left in Social Security by the time we reach retirement age. I once heard that if you took what you pay in Social Security tax and started investing it when you are 23 years old, that you would be a millionaire by retirement. Obviously, no one is getting millions from Social Security. The system is bound to break down. | |
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| 4. kykidd (4555) | 7 months ago |  Hmmm, I had not heard this yet. That is so surprising. I can imagine that the media is eating this up. And I suppose if asked, our president would say that he had not heard about it. Just like he said he did not hear about the Tea Parties that were thrown back in April. It is really scary that our system can really be that disturbed.
Wouldn't you think they would have used a database from the people who are currently receiving SS and just send them the checks? It seems illogical that they would use a different list than that.
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| Rollo1 (1551) | 7 months ago | I think they must have used a database of social security numbers and just sent checks to anyone whose date of birth was a certain date or before, to determine who was eligible. At the same time they never checked to see if they had applied for retirement benefits. They also sent checks to those receiving SSDI, so that database would show current recipients. Not sure why they didn't use a recipient database for the retirement benefits. | |
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5.  Savvynlady (2965) | 6 months ago |  Perhaps if they get them checks returned to them, then they could regenerate that money back into the government who needs it quite badly. Yes, I believe the government makes mistakes as noted, but only because folks probably don't tell and of course, you have folks cashing in on the dead too so there you go; wouldnt mind a stimulus check myself, but hey, gotta keep moving.
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