When my father died, my last remaining parent, I had to end his social security payments. It took me several months, and I received three or four payments I did not want to receive, but I could find no way to return them. And no one willing to interest themselves in that problem.
When discussing this with my wife last night, I remembered that I had to close the account that these checks were coming to, because I could not stop them any other way. I did not want to close the account, as there were still some things in there that needed attention, but it was the only solution I could imagine. So, look how hard I worked to not commit fraud. How easy, and logical, and plausible it would have been to just let the checks continue coming.
What I see not discussed is Soc. Sec ## given to foreigners temporarily in the US. And US citizens who become permanent expats.
Students, legal non-immigrant workers, are issued these ##. Many of them return to their home country and their # stays active. Some of them can apply for limited old-age benefits (based on their contribution) later in life. Do all their families report the death of this beneficiary to the US government ?
The SSA requires for benefits paid outside of the US "proof of life". If this is not given, benefits are stopped. Maybe this document is in some countries easier to fake than in others. Are audits done on benefits sent to foreigners/US expats?
In the US funeral homes report the deceased's info to the SSA. How many people here keep a dead close relative sitting in their chair a la Norman Bates ? More than Hitchcock thought possible?
I also do not know if benefits are maybe paid under the name of a dead male to a vey much alive female surviving wife?
This story needs a lot more facts & figures to make sense.
Is there not a time-lapse between people reporting a death and the system responding to that new information ? Maybe information is given incorrectly, incomplete, etc. and more is needed before cancelling payments. For many people the Soc. Sec. check is the only income they receive, so the SSA better be careful when they stop sending them money.
Since 2015 there is a rule that no one 115 or older can receive benefits from the SSA.
There is a time lapse. But in the SSA checking exercise that was reported in the Post, SSA staff checked more or less in real time: they took a sample of age 100+ people collecting benefits as of February 19 of this year. The results were reported in the Post on March 24, so presumably the analysis was completed well before then.
The SSA rule isn't that you can't receive benefits past 115, but they do stop payments until they can confirm the beneficiary is alive. I don't know how often that comes into play, however.
What I meant with "no one over 115" - and I should have added "automatically" - is that the DOGE bros were talking B.S. when they screamed about 150 year olds receiving benefits. As you indicate, these payments are scrutinized.
Furthermore, is it possible for you to get numbers straight from the SSA? Because now many of your readers want to know more about this issue!
$ 300 Million sounds a lot but it is not even enough give one dollar to every man, woman, child in the USA.
In the mean time, what is the purpose of this harping on "fraud/waste/abuse"? Unfettered access to the IRS and Medicare databases?
Mr. Musk says the systems need an overhaul. Will he ask for more H-1B workers to do the job ? (About 25 years ago employers managed to up the number of foreign workers allowed in considerably, using the Y2K scam.)
It is worse than that. The sample size is 1294 not 1107. You cannot assume they are alive if you cannot contact them. This translates to a 30% dead rate and over $500 Billion in overpayments.
I think he meant $500 Million, not billion. I don't know how to interpret the people SSA couldn't contact. They were obviously trying to do this quickly, so who knows. Again, if they released this analysis publicly a lot of questions would be answered.
When my FIL died I went to the funeral home the said they always notify SSA when everyone dies. I would tend to believe this is common practice. Elon, Trump and all these scammsters would say any nonsense.
That's the standard practice. When I was at SSA we found some cases where a family would do-it-yourself in order to not have SSA find out, but that was pretty rare. Musk's claims were mostly a misunderstanding of how SSA's databases work.
But in this case, it's SSA itself claiming that 18% of age 100+ beneficiaries were actually dead. That's not impossible in a technical sense -- say, people might die in a short period between collecting their benefit check and SSA's staff checking whether they're alive. But SSA shared so few details of its analysis that it's hard to say. Hoping to get the actual documents to find out.
As far as I can tell, this issue (if it is an issue) is disconnected from illegal immigration. Yes, SSA has issued Social Security numbers to undocumented immigrants, but that's not the issue we're looking at here.
What may have happened is pretty clear cut: a person works, pays into Social Security, retires, and collects a benefit. That person dies. But their death isn't reported to SSA, so the benefits keep getting paid out.
Was it intentional? We don't know. Does some relative withdraw those benefits from the bank? We don't know.
For the moment I'm just focused on whether these figures from SSA are correct.
The Social Security numbers issued to undocumented immigrants in the past few years were for people who had claimed asylum. They can get legal SSNs. But you're correct that in general undocumented immigrants cannot.
They are using a loophole. Look at the numbers, how many hopefuls arrived in recent years and the limited number of visas issued in the refugee/asylum seeker category. This easy option should have been cancelled a long time ago. Much misery would have been prevented.
The probability that someone 100+ dies in any given month is not small. Back of the envelope I think about 3%. That means one-sixth of the errors are deaths too recent to deal with—you have to survive a full month to collect, but you are paid at the beginning of the month and it’s clawed back if you die. Another sixth have received only one payment in error.
I’d be worried if it turns out people were paid for years after death, but two months sounds like ordinary bureaucratic delay.
Rather than have somebody check into this, a more effective answer is to burn Tesla dealerships and hire 70 and 80 year old professional socialists to call Musk and Trump fascists. Also, promote phony protests 24-7 on American Pravda, our legacy media.
The issue I've been hearing about is that even if the dead person isn't collecting SS payments, that active SS number is then being used to get other government benefits like SBA loans. Cleaning up the SS database isn't just about reducing fraudulent SS payments.
Yes, just focusing on improper SS payments is missing the forest for the trees. To have tens of millions of “active” numbers in the system for people who are certainly dead creates the opportunity for all kinds of fraud and other illegal behavior. SSNs are used as identifiers for many other government benefits and programs, both federal and state. Stolen numbers can also enable people to secure US employment, open bank accounts, etc. Just the other day there was an odd article in Bloomberg describing how hundreds of North Koreans were using stolen identities to obtain remote software jobs at major US firms as a source of income for the regime. It is incredibly disappointing to learn that the SSA was not taking even the most elementary steps to maintain an accurate database.
Thanks for the input. I am curious, since your worked for SSA: 1) how are deaths reported to SSA and by whom; and 2) what happens to the SS numbers belonging to deceased persons? One of the problems I see is that valid/active SS numbers are very useful for other types of fraud. Is there any way to ascertain if multiple people are using the same number?
1. This is a big problem in Japan, even with their rigorous civic honor culture. No surprise it's a problem in much less strict societies.
2. While the magnitude of any individual revelation from DOGE is small potatoes, the overarching pattern of carelessness, agency incompetence, and insider fraud is real bad.
3. Democrats cannot win by forever trying to question the legitimacy of DOGE. Ultimately Joni Ernst is supervising Musk's team, and she is very difficult to argue with. Especially when the argument sounds like they want to sweep the waste back under the rug.
I am reasonably confident that it wasn’t a random sample, but much more likely to be a 100 review of certain sub populations of the 100+ year beneficiary population.
That's a pretty astounding result - and just when I had convinced myself that the DOGE figures were exaggerated. Which they likely were, but then the SSA folks kind of sloughed it off (as government statisticians often do as being "insignificant" - but to my eye, they were real numbers that added up to something. That said, when my mother recently passed, SSA clamped down on her (and told the pensions and insurers of the world) with lightning speed)!
This is still a much smaller figure than DOGE implied, but nevertheless a large number -- roughly one-in-five beneficiairies aged 100+. I guess we'll see how this plays out. Even now I find the numbers tough to believe, but form what the Post printed it's tough to interpret them otherwise.
The irony, of course, is that they presume the result is dismissive of what DOGE is doing/finding, though - as you point out, it's a bit of an eyebrow raiser appreciate your work here Oh, and I enjoyed your book...
When my father died, my last remaining parent, I had to end his social security payments. It took me several months, and I received three or four payments I did not want to receive, but I could find no way to return them. And no one willing to interest themselves in that problem.
When discussing this with my wife last night, I remembered that I had to close the account that these checks were coming to, because I could not stop them any other way. I did not want to close the account, as there were still some things in there that needed attention, but it was the only solution I could imagine. So, look how hard I worked to not commit fraud. How easy, and logical, and plausible it would have been to just let the checks continue coming.
What I see not discussed is Soc. Sec ## given to foreigners temporarily in the US. And US citizens who become permanent expats.
Students, legal non-immigrant workers, are issued these ##. Many of them return to their home country and their # stays active. Some of them can apply for limited old-age benefits (based on their contribution) later in life. Do all their families report the death of this beneficiary to the US government ?
The SSA requires for benefits paid outside of the US "proof of life". If this is not given, benefits are stopped. Maybe this document is in some countries easier to fake than in others. Are audits done on benefits sent to foreigners/US expats?
In the US funeral homes report the deceased's info to the SSA. How many people here keep a dead close relative sitting in their chair a la Norman Bates ? More than Hitchcock thought possible?
I also do not know if benefits are maybe paid under the name of a dead male to a vey much alive female surviving wife?
This story needs a lot more facts & figures to make sense.
I agree on that -- we need to know more.
Is there not a time-lapse between people reporting a death and the system responding to that new information ? Maybe information is given incorrectly, incomplete, etc. and more is needed before cancelling payments. For many people the Soc. Sec. check is the only income they receive, so the SSA better be careful when they stop sending them money.
Since 2015 there is a rule that no one 115 or older can receive benefits from the SSA.
There is a time lapse. But in the SSA checking exercise that was reported in the Post, SSA staff checked more or less in real time: they took a sample of age 100+ people collecting benefits as of February 19 of this year. The results were reported in the Post on March 24, so presumably the analysis was completed well before then.
The SSA rule isn't that you can't receive benefits past 115, but they do stop payments until they can confirm the beneficiary is alive. I don't know how often that comes into play, however.
What I meant with "no one over 115" - and I should have added "automatically" - is that the DOGE bros were talking B.S. when they screamed about 150 year olds receiving benefits. As you indicate, these payments are scrutinized.
Furthermore, is it possible for you to get numbers straight from the SSA? Because now many of your readers want to know more about this issue!
$ 300 Million sounds a lot but it is not even enough give one dollar to every man, woman, child in the USA.
In the mean time, what is the purpose of this harping on "fraud/waste/abuse"? Unfettered access to the IRS and Medicare databases?
Mr. Musk says the systems need an overhaul. Will he ask for more H-1B workers to do the job ? (About 25 years ago employers managed to up the number of foreign workers allowed in considerably, using the Y2K scam.)
It is worse than that. The sample size is 1294 not 1107. You cannot assume they are alive if you cannot contact them. This translates to a 30% dead rate and over $500 Billion in overpayments.
You believe that the SSA would not pick up on $ 500 Billion in payments to family members of dead people?
Again, I would like to see facts&figures from the SSA itself. Not regurgitated by journalists.
Also, how did you get to the $ 500 Billion?
I think he meant $500 Million, not billion. I don't know how to interpret the people SSA couldn't contact. They were obviously trying to do this quickly, so who knows. Again, if they released this analysis publicly a lot of questions would be answered.
When my FIL died I went to the funeral home the said they always notify SSA when everyone dies. I would tend to believe this is common practice. Elon, Trump and all these scammsters would say any nonsense.
That's the standard practice. When I was at SSA we found some cases where a family would do-it-yourself in order to not have SSA find out, but that was pretty rare. Musk's claims were mostly a misunderstanding of how SSA's databases work.
But in this case, it's SSA itself claiming that 18% of age 100+ beneficiaries were actually dead. That's not impossible in a technical sense -- say, people might die in a short period between collecting their benefit check and SSA's staff checking whether they're alive. But SSA shared so few details of its analysis that it's hard to say. Hoping to get the actual documents to find out.
As far as I can tell, this issue (if it is an issue) is disconnected from illegal immigration. Yes, SSA has issued Social Security numbers to undocumented immigrants, but that's not the issue we're looking at here.
What may have happened is pretty clear cut: a person works, pays into Social Security, retires, and collects a benefit. That person dies. But their death isn't reported to SSA, so the benefits keep getting paid out.
Was it intentional? We don't know. Does some relative withdraw those benefits from the bank? We don't know.
For the moment I'm just focused on whether these figures from SSA are correct.
Undocumented migrants cannot get a (real) Soc.Sec #. Some legal non-immigrants cannot even get that # anymore.
Undocumented migrants can buy a fake #. Often they pay into the system using that #. But for lack of status they will never get a benefit from it.
According to DOGE the ## of the SSA do not add up. So one wonders where the discrepancy occurs.
My remarks were about legal migrants !
The Social Security numbers issued to undocumented immigrants in the past few years were for people who had claimed asylum. They can get legal SSNs. But you're correct that in general undocumented immigrants cannot.
Then they are not undocumented, they are claiming asylum.
They are using a loophole. Look at the numbers, how many hopefuls arrived in recent years and the limited number of visas issued in the refugee/asylum seeker category. This easy option should have been cancelled a long time ago. Much misery would have been prevented.
These migrants are issued Soc.Sec.## because they have (temporary) status and are eligible to work.
How long had they been dead?
The probability that someone 100+ dies in any given month is not small. Back of the envelope I think about 3%. That means one-sixth of the errors are deaths too recent to deal with—you have to survive a full month to collect, but you are paid at the beginning of the month and it’s clawed back if you die. Another sixth have received only one payment in error.
I’d be worried if it turns out people were paid for years after death, but two months sounds like ordinary bureaucratic delay.
Rather than have somebody check into this, a more effective answer is to burn Tesla dealerships and hire 70 and 80 year old professional socialists to call Musk and Trump fascists. Also, promote phony protests 24-7 on American Pravda, our legacy media.
The issue I've been hearing about is that even if the dead person isn't collecting SS payments, that active SS number is then being used to get other government benefits like SBA loans. Cleaning up the SS database isn't just about reducing fraudulent SS payments.
Yes, just focusing on improper SS payments is missing the forest for the trees. To have tens of millions of “active” numbers in the system for people who are certainly dead creates the opportunity for all kinds of fraud and other illegal behavior. SSNs are used as identifiers for many other government benefits and programs, both federal and state. Stolen numbers can also enable people to secure US employment, open bank accounts, etc. Just the other day there was an odd article in Bloomberg describing how hundreds of North Koreans were using stolen identities to obtain remote software jobs at major US firms as a source of income for the regime. It is incredibly disappointing to learn that the SSA was not taking even the most elementary steps to maintain an accurate database.
That's not even mentioning those dead folks UNDER 100 getting checks.
Thanks for the input. I am curious, since your worked for SSA: 1) how are deaths reported to SSA and by whom; and 2) what happens to the SS numbers belonging to deceased persons? One of the problems I see is that valid/active SS numbers are very useful for other types of fraud. Is there any way to ascertain if multiple people are using the same number?
1. This is a big problem in Japan, even with their rigorous civic honor culture. No surprise it's a problem in much less strict societies.
2. While the magnitude of any individual revelation from DOGE is small potatoes, the overarching pattern of carelessness, agency incompetence, and insider fraud is real bad.
3. Democrats cannot win by forever trying to question the legitimacy of DOGE. Ultimately Joni Ernst is supervising Musk's team, and she is very difficult to argue with. Especially when the argument sounds like they want to sweep the waste back under the rug.
The funeral home has to send in a form which should immediately stop payments. That's what happened with my Mom.
I am reasonably confident that it wasn’t a random sample, but much more likely to be a 100 review of certain sub populations of the 100+ year beneficiary population.
It's possible, but a non-random sample means SSA's figures don't really mean anything. Which makes me wonder why SSA would produce them.
That's a pretty astounding result - and just when I had convinced myself that the DOGE figures were exaggerated. Which they likely were, but then the SSA folks kind of sloughed it off (as government statisticians often do as being "insignificant" - but to my eye, they were real numbers that added up to something. That said, when my mother recently passed, SSA clamped down on her (and told the pensions and insurers of the world) with lightning speed)!
This is still a much smaller figure than DOGE implied, but nevertheless a large number -- roughly one-in-five beneficiairies aged 100+. I guess we'll see how this plays out. Even now I find the numbers tough to believe, but form what the Post printed it's tough to interpret them otherwise.
The irony, of course, is that they presume the result is dismissive of what DOGE is doing/finding, though - as you point out, it's a bit of an eyebrow raiser appreciate your work here Oh, and I enjoyed your book...
That's exactly how I took it: THIS is how you rebut Musk?
Thanks regarding the book! Very happy that it's out.