Like this case where the woman died in March and the people have been allegedly cashing her SS checks since then.
With the number of dishonest folks around, how do the authorities keep from having thousands and thousands of cases where a death is hidden for years?
Is there some requirement to show a living breathing soul with the correct fingerprints once per year in order to receive these benefits? Do the authorities simply depend on friends and family to note the sudden disappearance of the person?
Most dead people have their deadness reported to the SSA by the appropriate local authority that deals with dead people. The cases where people keep collecting checks are usually when someone dies and it doesn’t get reported, because their body has been quietly decomposing in the basement.
The article you link to more or less answers your question. Specifically, that, in these cases, they don’t find out about it unless the death is discovered and, thus, reported. If ones wants to dig another lock for the Panama canal in his cellar for Grandma, there is nothing keeping him from collecting her SS checks, especially if he has access to her bank account (as was the case in your article).
Checking the SSA’s webpage, they appear to pretty much rely on the honesty of the family/friends/authorities, etc in these matters.
If Grandad has any mates who might wonder why he’s suddenly disappeared, that could be less of a good idea. Hiding Grandad’s heart attack by burying him in the back yeard for 10 years sounds like a good way to make the police wonder if it really was a heart attack or an arsenic milkshake after all.
The scenario of “hiding” dead mom or dad means that
1: This is something you’re willing to undertake and risk prison to do
2: You’re willing to let your dead parent rot without a decent funeral
3: Your parents are virtual hermits and have absolutely no one that cares or knows whether they are alive or dead outside of yourself
To have all three of those working in tandem is pretty damn rare, and would take a borderline sociopath to undertake. Checks and balances don’t really come into play as the incidence of this kind of stunt would presumably be extraordinarily rare.
After my mother died, I notified SS and they checks kept coming automatically into her account, which was also my account.
For three months I called SS and told them to stop, the lady there said “Just keep them, they’ll stop eventually.” After 14 months they quit coming. On the 15th month I got a nasty letter from SS demanding the money back I “stole” from them.
Thank goodness I didn’t spend any of. I just sent it back to them.
It doesn’t seem to well organized. But the deaths go reported eventually and SS will just demand repayment of all money they paid you that you weren’t do.
I am a true crime buff and I recall an old lady in California would take in older men with SS or older alcoholics on disability, and she killed them and buried them in her back yard, or dumped the bodies in the garbage and got away with it for a couple of years, till some one finally decided to take a closer look
The SSA website seems to be down right now, but this page basically explains the SSA policy on dead beneficiaries. Basically, you are expected to hang on to the checks\money transferred until they finally stop coming, then return all money to the gummint. I don’t know why they got snippy with you about it. It seems you are also expected to return money given on the month of death, which doesn’t seem terribly fair, as the deceased no doubt had use for the money for the part of the month they were alive.
The word “stole” does not appear in any of the forms SSA sends out in the event of overpayment. Feel free to criticize anything that actually happened, but please refrain from misstating facts. Or, if you insist SSA accused you of theft, please provide the form number in which that accusation appeared.
Yeah, SSA fucks up all the time, tho the incidence (and dollar amount involved) is miniscule compared to the millions of monthly transactions they get right. One thing that might dissuade many folks from hiding a beneficiary’s death is the desire not to be prosecuted for fraud.
And SSA could learn of a beneficiary’s death from a number of sources. One common source of such info is the IRS informing SSA of taxes paid on an estate.
Just checked some figures. In 2007 SSA paid bens to 54.7 million people. Yeah, handling that many cases every month they predictably get some of them wrong. Which can be a hassle for the proportionally few people involved. But it amazes me that folks adopt the attitude that just because their government screwed up they are somehow entitled to keep the money they know they shouldn’t have received. IMO you have to be pretty stupid to think your relations with the feds are governed by “finders keepers.”
Different parts of different programs are handled by different components within SSA. And communication within the agency - tho generally pretty good - is certainly not perfect. Overpayments occur all the time - even in situations where the Agency has been informed that payments should be stopped. Another common overpayment situation occurs when a disability bens recipient returns to work but does not inform SSA. Or even if they do inform SSA, or SSA learns of the employment income from the IRS, they fail to stop payment. Fortunately it seems most people are not criminal or stupid enough to think they are entitled to a windfall in such situations.
One final thing, many folk realize that at some time or another they are going to have dealings with their federal government, whether through requesting a tax refund, their own application for SS bens, etc. The government has many ways to recover funds it is owed.
As a related point; do the SS records show evidence of a large number of extremely elderly beneficiaries? like people collecting who were born in 1850 or so?
I have also wondered about this. My wife and I live in Canada and get US SS payments (small, but what the h?) They both go into our joint bank account. If one of us kicks off, SS will not be informed. Once a year, we get questionnaires from them, asking if we are still breathing. (Curiously, it is always labeled “Second notice” as though there were a first that we had ignored. That could happen once but not every year.) We will them out, sign them, and return and the payments continue. But signatures could be forged. The survivor could continue to fill out joint US tax returns and so on. True I have an insurance policy in the US, but my wife doesn’t. How could they ever know?
No. Data is easily organized by birthdate. So it is easy to flag any account apparently exceeding the longest human lifespan. Reminder, if you check into news reports for the oldest living American, as well as the most common birth names, both generally come from SSA. They keep tabs on you coming and going.
SSA very well may not find out so long as the survivor wished to perpetuate the fraud, and no estate needed to be settled after the first death. When the survivor died, if SSA found out they would attempt to collect from the estate (if any).
OK the word misappropriation of SS funds. If you don’t return said monies by such and such a date we will turn the matter over to our attorneys and you will be prosecuted for theft. Those were the words used.
I guess that doesn’t mean STOLE to you. Since this happened in 1980s. I don’t have the forms but it also wasn’t a form letter. It was a typed letter signed.
I suggest before you call people out, you make sure you know your stuff.
Rest assured there probably is little “stuff” I know better than this particular subject.
You know it is curious, but as I type I am looking at a casefile concerning an overpayment, SSA’s internal policy statements concerning the procedures for notifying individuals of an overpayment, and the letters and forms that are sent out (SSA 3105 FWIW). And although I see mulitple references to one’s ability to request reconsideration of the overpayment determination or request waiver or recovery, I am unable to find a hint of threats of prosecution, charges of “misappropriation” or anything else similar to what your fevered and faulty memory seems to recall.
Oh yeah - the forms I am looking at have not changed since the mid-80s.
Like I said, SSA fucks up all the time. But I have never known the Agency to be cruel and threatening when they attempt to correct their mistakes. Of course, criticizing the big bad government agency makes for such a more interesting story, doesn’t it? :rolleyes: