That sounds closer to real evidence of fraud than the way other people understood it, though still not conclusive, considering the last sentence of your initial post, “I think it’s not the SS check, but rather maybe food stamps?” So it could be the SS check, ‘food stamps’, something else, or conceivably could be nothing, right?
Which besides any philosophical discussion of whose money it really is (‘the govt’s’ or all of ours) how unfair life is so people do/don’t have a right to break the law compensate etc, that also makes it difficult to know to whom to report it. If you know for a fact a living person is collecting a dead person’s benefits from a specific agency, you can look into contacting that agency, and they might well have a tip line etc. It’s not typically a matter for the local police, nor as others have said is there a legal requirement to keep the USPS up to date.
One other thing I’d mention about being landlord was partly touched on in an earlier post. There might be an assumption a landlord has a personally self interested reason for wrong footing a tenant, even an ex-tenant. Certainly a current tenant (though not the case with you) in places with local govt regulated rents like where we’re landlords: it would benefit us individually not just as citizens to get a low rent tenant thrown out, and the local authorities are very conscious of that and suspicious of landlords getting involved in tenant affairs that way (in NYC).
Me? I’m all about minding my own fucking business so no, I would not “drop dime”. If i were the tenant? I may because ex-tenant has now made it my business by including me in her shenanigans as her free post office box.
Only in the most nominal sense. You must have personal experience with observing far vaster sums of money than a few food stamps or something being mismanaged or lost somehow by the government.
Don’t agencies like the SSA get notifications of deaths? So isn’t it really unlikely they’re going to continue to pay out benefits very long after someone dies?
you THINK it’s POSSIBLE something MIGHT be happening and want to know if you should get involved? umm . . … no.
I’d hazard a guess that you’d be hard pressed to find a government employee that would do much other than politely listen to your concerns and then just go on about their day never giving it another thought after you hang up with them.
if i witness a currently occuring crime (property theft, arson, vandalism, … that type stuff), I’d call the police. I’d do this for the protection of my neighbors and to make my community a better and safer place to live.
if i knew a child or animal was being neglected, or in a really bad or dangerous situation, i would call the appropriate authority. they can’t fend for themselves, someone has to be their voice.
otherwise, i just mind my own business and appreciate others doing the same.
That’s generally how I consider it, but your comparison to my neighbor’s finances was not apt. And as a citizen I have a right to be concerned with how the government spends money of any amount. It’s my choice not to concern myself with individual minor issues as described in the OP. I can certainly tell the authorities about any possible misappropriation of money if I want to, I just think it’s a stupid waste of time in matters such as this.
You’re right. Maybe a better example would be that your neighbor’s husband may beat his wife, or they may have a lot of household accidents. You have no direct evidence either way, you have just seen bruises but haven’t actually witnessed any beating. The wife is an adult woman and she can call the police any time she wants, and they will promptly act against her husband. So you have no need to get involved.
If she has chosen not to call them, it’s not your business.
Similarly, our government could, if it want to, cross correlate all the data it has access to, and pass laws that extend it’s access to things like individual bank transactions, and it could then autonomously identify most tax cheats and welfare fraudsters.
It clearly has the power to do this. The fact that we the people haven’t voted in politicians with an interest in doing this is on us. That’s where the flaw is. (and of course, big thieves cost the government much more than little thieves)
An ex tenant of mine moved to another state but continued to report my address for tax purposes, because the rates were much lower. It all came out when his tax forms came to my house. Who would I report him to? How many hours would I have to sit on hold and how far would I be dragged into the mess? I can’t think of any good thing that would come from bringing myself to the attention of a large government agency as a whistleblower. There’s probably an overworked agent somewhere who knows all about the situation and doesn’t have the resources to do anything about it. In this guy’s case, I felt justified in returning the the mail marked ‘not at this address.’
ETA (for clarity): I thought the SNAP benefits formerly known as “food stamps” were exclusively digital these days (in the form of credits being electronically transferred to EBTs). The only form of nutritional assistance program that come in a mailable format that I’ve seen for several years is WIC vouchers.
WIC is now more and more by plastic card - I haven’t seen a paper WIC voucher for almost a year now.
While EBT/SNAP/food stamp benefits are now deposited to an account accessed via plastic card, the physical card itself, replacement cards, notifications of re-qualification requirements (every six months while I was on it), notifications of audits, and other such correspondence for those benefits does continue to come via mail.
You do not, in fact, have to use your street address for this purpose. My spouse and I used a PO Box. Because many people requiring such benefits are in, shall we say, precarious housing situations (couch surfing, homeless shelters, Og know what else) it is perfectly legal to have your correspondence sent to the address of your choice as long as Public Aid knows that’s what’s going on. So, in fact, Public Aid may be fully informed about all this and it’s all on the level - maybe not. As a third party bystander you can’t know for sure what’s going on here.
USPS doesn’t have such a form. The closest is a Change of Address Form, listed online with the link Change Your Address, which includes the following:
USPS doesn’t want second hand information. Now if letters were coming to the landlord’s address, they could return it with No Longer at this Address written on it. USPS won’t take that as notification, but they will return that letter to the sender. And the next one, and the next one . . .
As an aside, if I was the ex-tenant, the reason I wouldn’t turn in a change of address for my mother is that I now know that the USPS will notify ALL MAGAZINES AND FUND RAISING ORGANIZATIONS (that have requested it, and they all do) what the new address is. It’s been five years and I’m still getting her late husband’s hunting magazines, and he died four years before she did. Some of the funding requests came for years even though I returned the envelopes with Deceased - Never Lived at this Address on them.
Of course, I might have to put some spin on the my request to the next tenant if I wanted her to save any actual letters for me to pick up. What kind of spin would depend on what the tenant would go for. But once some marketers get your address, it will follow you to every new address you ever get.
Do we know for a fact benefits are being collected?
As I stated - after my husband’s death I had some correspondence with Public Aid. Some nosy outsider might assume, based on the Public Aid logo and return address, that I was “collecting benefits” when in fact I was answering other questions and receiving notification of other things.
All I can see is that this person is still getting some sort of mail from Public Aid - unless the person holding their mail is also opening it (which would be illegal without permission) that person might be assuming benefits but perhaps would be in the wrong. MOST benefits these days go to a plastic card, they don’t arrive as a physical check. Based on my experience I think it’s more likely there’s some sort of on-going correspondence here, not a collection of benefits.
But hey, I could be wrong, too!
Bottom line - it’s not inherently illegal to use someone else’s address for correspondence with Public Aid. We don’t, in fact, know what’s going on.
That’s a pretty narrow and short-sighted view of what good citizenship entails. Where do you think the government’s money comes from, anyway? People like you and me. And a “small amount of money” isn’t so small when, abetted by apathy, it’s multiplied by the thousands or millions.
If you’re taking care of the final affairs of a deceased person (which position I found myself in this year) it’s not uncommon to continue to receive mail addressed to the dead person for some time afterward. In some cases, the party doesn’t know the person is dead. In some cases, they will write “to the estate of John Doe”. In some cases they just keep addressing things to John Doe and you, the surviving spouse/whatever, wind up opening the mail for the dead person. My husband has been dead for 8 months, got mail for him as recently as last week.
As I said, most actual aid these days goes to a plastic card, not into a physical envelope. Now, it could be she’s filling out paperwork to extend benefits on his behalf, that’s about the ONLY hinky thing I can imagine going on here, but that’s once every six months and you have to provide back up documentation for claiming the person is alive.
So, based on my own experience with both Public Aid and a deceased spouse, my guess is that it’s some sort of correspondence with Public Aid and not cheating on benefits going on here. But yes, there is a possibility I could be wrong. I’m not a dishonest person so I’m not as clever as some of the thieves, con-artists, and other cheaters out there.
Around here, I’d take that to mean: if the DES finds out my address has changed, they stop benefits, I have to sit in line for 3 hours, then come back the next day. And I have to do it again every time I shift to a different couch – because if I don’t have a residential mailing address, they won’t pay benefits.
I’ve actually lost track of what we are discussing But in any event, I doubt the Public Assistance office or whatever they are called are aware and on board with continuing to send mail to a dead person.
So because the mother was on assistance, somehow it’s assumed that this mail is still assistance, and not something else entirely? Who specifically told you that the DES checks this out? The tennant who ratted on your ex-tennant?
But in any event, I doubt the Public Assistance office or whatever they are called are aware and on board with continuing to send mail to a dead person.