Social Security Administration Paid Out Over One Million in Benefits to Dead People

About 58 dead people received $1,111,000 in Social Security benefits last year a new report says. Of course, it wasn’t the dead people who got the money but thieves scamming the system.

I guess we might be surprised that it was only just over a million!

The Social Security Administration (SSA) improperly paid about $1,111,000 to deceased or likely deceased beneficiaries, according to a SSA Office of Inspector General (OIG) report.
The report titled, “Payments Deposited into Bank Accounts After Beneficiaries are Deceased,” was created to determine the effectiveness of SSA’s “procedures for recovering payments improperly deposited into Title II beneficiaries’ bank accounts after their deaths.”

According to the SSA, Title II benefits are disability benefits, because they fall under Title 2 of the Social Security Act, where disability benefits are addressed.

“SSA did not effectively recover direct deposit payments to bank accounts after beneficiaries’ deaths because the Agency did not always determine when suspended beneficiaries had died,” states the report. “We concluded that 58 of the 59 beneficiaries we reviewed had died or were likely deceased.

“We estimate that SSA improperly paid about $1,111,000 to the 58 deceased or likely deceased beneficiaries,” states the report. “While SSA recovered about $35,000 paid after the deaths of the six beneficiaries it terminated, the Agency did not attempt to recover payments from the other beneficiaries.”

Pure waste. But most government spending is pure waste.

Warner Todd Huston

Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago-based freelance writer, has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and is featured on many websites such as Andrew Breitbart's BigGovernment.com, BigJournalsim.com and all Breitbart News' other sites, RightWingNews.com, CanadaFreePress.com, and many, many others. Additionally, he has been a frequent guest on talk-radio programs across the country to discuss his opinion editorials and current events as well as appearing on TV networks such as CNN, Fox News, Fox Business Network, and various Chicago-based news programs. He has also written for several history magazines and appears in the book "Americans on Politics, Policy and Pop Culture" which can be purchased on amazon.com. He is also the owner and operator of PubliusForum.com. Feel free to contact him with any comments or questions : EMAIL Warner Todd Huston and follow him on Twitter, on Google Plus , and Facebook.

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