Excellent! Those who come forward will be an interesting bunch, of which 99.999999% are criminals. Order more handcuffs! Those who don't come forward should be removed within 2-4 weeks from every database, in particular databases for all other forms of public aid, voter rolls, and the IRS.
if they're stupid enough to come forward. as I wrote above, can't Treasury find out where the checks are being deposited and then obtain subpoenas to get the account holder information for further investigation?
Really, now? My grandmother, no longer receiving Social Security FYI, had no birth certificate. When she applied for a passport, she used LdS baby blessing and baptismal records.
Can't treasury find out WHERE the checks are being deposited and then obtain subpoenas to get the account holder information for further investigation and make arrests?
If the death didn't happen in an official setting (ie hospital), or not reported, then relative could easily keep on cashing the deceased's checks.
Jeff mentioned that not all are receiving checks. But I heard an explanation on the radio that the numbers can be used for fraud, for illegals. Also to secure jobs, driver licenses, etc It would be easy to see how many names are assigned to one number and go from there!
Send them a letter, notify them they have 30 days to appear in person or their benefits are cut off.
How many people do you know over 100? I’ve seen about 3 in the local paper in the last year, so start there. And they where exactly 100 years old by a few days.
In the category of "too unbelievable to be true," I recall working on a ranch in my teens. One of my jobs was felling timber to be used for fencing. In this task, I would swing a double-bladed axe (with the skill of a sixteen-year-old). The ranch had one power chainsaw that was always used by one of the other teenaged "ranch hands." At lunch one day I remarked to my boss that with an axe I could out-perform the chainsaw. In other words, I was one helluva legendary woodsman due some praise. He guffawed and challenged me to a competition, which I promptly won. My axe beat the chainsaw. He sped off for town to see the chainsaw dealer. Tuns out they had put the chain on backwards! It was cutting with the dull side. That seems to be an apt metaphor for the government. They have all the chains on backwards.
Great story! It's got me smirking and shaking my head. It's a dang good thing you announced that you could beat the chainsaw. Your boss should have given you a bonus and the poor guy who'd had to use the dull-side chainsaw should have given you his earnings for a week because your brag ended up making his job so much easier.
You may often be right but nothing is 100% true all of the time. Our National Park system relies on highly skilled search and rescue, back country rangers, experienced historians and guides, etc. for just one example...our thousands of aircraft aloft every day need FAA controllers and TSA personnel to prevent hijackings, collisions, etc. for just two examples.
The lack of flagging social security numbers for people who are deceased would NOT be limited to those over 100 years old. People of all ages die every day. I think more digging is needed to get to the bottom of this. Wouldn't the majority of people report a social security check arriving for a deceased person? I've never heard anyone I know mention that they are still getting checks for their loved one.... I don't doubt that excess funds are being wasted here though. What a mess.
When my father passed,I specifically remember having to contact Social Security, at which point they clawed back their last payment to him. Has this changed sin e 2012 that funeral homes now report?
Funeral homes are required to report. This happened to everyone I know who died. They claw back that final payment while the body is still warm…believe me.
Just like the ERIC using the SS death index is to report to the member states so dead voters can be removed from voter rolls. Not happening in CO, I can tell you that! The government needs to get these databases talking to each other without human involvement other than input. I would imagine that is doable.
If someone is collecting/living outside the US and dies, there are many countries that don’t feel the need to follow another country’s protocols. There’s nothing that compels them to. Some countries do not have the same infrastructure to do so. War zones for instance, or not computerized or it takes a long time just to get a formalized death certificate or they aren’t friendly with that other country.
Not every country does, can or feels like notifying US Social Security. Or any other country’s, as well.
Thank you and in my experience, less than 2% of benefits went outside the US and most of those were sent to Canada and Mexico, the Philippines may indeed be problematic - I still say how does simply defunding whole entire departments of government overnight make anything work better?
Ah, a Democrat voter self identifies. First you identify mission critical departments ( military, hospitals, etc. & keep paying them) Then you prioritize departmentsv to defund them & stop paying people . You will find out what you can do without, or the employees or beneficiaries let you know that they need it and haven’t found another way to get it.
We need civil service employees like it or not, to do these things and the meat cleaver style of burning all programs to the ground will make it impossible to do even simple tasks.
They need software that can manage the whole system, from receiving death notices to removing the dead person from all data bases. Make it so automatic and locked down that it is not hackable and does not require humans to input the info. A fortune of taxpayer money has been stolen - for YEARS. Wow.
You are making a serious and unfounded assumption based upon click bait...the system is funded by the Social Security Trust Fund, which is not bankrupt and many politicians have greedy eyes on it for illegal uses. They feed you clickbait because they do not want the FICA tax base level increased which would fully fund the system. If you ever had a job with FICA deductions from your pay, you and your employer have paid into this fund.
Your reply displays a level of trust in human nature that is unwarranted and denies the historical record and everyone’s lived experience. If’s have identified the problem, the implications are obvious; no efforts have been made to confirm or refute that monies are going out fraudulently, nor has anything been done to resolve the problem (implying that it is either not a priority or it is seen as a feature), plus. it has gotten worse, right?
Actuarially it is predicted to go bankrupt in the next decade or two IIRCC. (I wonder if that takes into account these bogus accounts (more ‘active’ accounts than the total population of the USA— just like states with more registered voters than voting age citizens)
How do we know you are trustworthy with our data, civil servants have to pass background checks and our watched quite closely at the lower pay grades I know this from my personal direct experience.
I certainly do agree that pay grades above GS 12 or GS 13 need some serious culling and I fully support that.
So you were a civil servant? Do I understand that correctly? And you're wondering if I'm trustworthy? To borrow a line from VP Vance, "Do you HEAR yourself, Margaret?"
"Margaret" seriously? I find your lack of research and knowledge kind of funny, you are certainly not alone. It's much easier to blame and scapegoat other people when you are not happy with the way that things are.
Most of the people being cleaved, as you put it, are extra expenses that do not add any value to the American people. Quite the opposite, they are a drain on our resources & tax dollars, which cause us to pay more in taxes in order to pay them. Cutting the fat is necessary to get to a baseline of what’s needed, and what wasn’t. I’m personally sick of paying billions for agencies like the DOE to indoctrinate our children (& dumb ass adults) with their Marxist/Communist America hating ideologies.
When my mother passed in 2007, it was only a matter of a few weeks when I received a letter from SSA requesting that I send back the money she had received that month - or else. That was too long ago to recall the consequences, but I did not argue. Is that still occurring once confirmation of death is received by SSA or is that "too much trouble?" I read Childers faithfully - he's entertaining and writes on a wide range of topics. I highly recommend him. I am also enjoying your new focus
Yes, that is still happening. Believe me, it is not ‘too much trouble’ for SS to claw back that final benefit. Talk to folks who have had a loved one pass. Same story with everyone.
I think the implication is that these phantom recipients are part of some organization’s side project for funding and possibly thwarting elections - probably not just a gargantuan collection of individual fraudster relatives.
I don't know how the system operates elsewhere, but here in South Texas when my first wife applied for SS in June after she turned 65, it took two months for it to process. She got a check in August. She died in September, and the SS clawed back the direct deposit for September.
Same thing with my second wife, who died in May, and the May check was clawed back. So at least in some places the system seems to be working.
Yes. Same thing happened with my grandmother recently. Had to send back last payment that was received -the month after her death. Because we hadn’t gotten all her paperwork finalized that quickly
So … all these centarians are likely a grift…. They need to find out where the money went and also send a nasty letter requiring they send it all back!
The majority of people would report that, but there is fraud, particularly in foreign countries where if people can still access a bank account of an American who retired abroad and won't notify anyone of a death. There was a case like that that I know about because it was my brother-in-law's dad who died while living in the Philippines and the locals didn't report it.
I'm guessing there are extensive fraud rings. They're likely much more of a problem than individuals continuing to collect the checks of deceased family members.
I worked with the Social Security Administration back in the 1970s and 80s and every region had fraud investigators who were looking at and even making arrests for these kinds of things...the real waste in government, in my opinion, is in the upper ranks of obscure "Empire Builders" who create sub staffs around themselves to support their own GS-15 and above, salaries...unfortunately the DOGE approach simply cuts off the head to save the body..creating real dangers to the economy among other things.
70's and 80's? Are you kidding; you are comparing apples and oranges. This ain't grandmas Govenmnt. Get on board with whats happening today. There is fraud in SSN; why can't you admit it? That's like saying I played basketball back in the 70's and am still playing at that level. You don't know anything more than any of us here. Good grief.
Obama uses the social security number of someone born in Connecticut and deceased in early 1900s or before. (See Susan Daniels.) I wonder how many people are involved in a similar scenario. Alive but dead and getting benefits.
My conspiracy theory brain has to ask the question, is this another method of funding the Deep State? Hopefully Trump will get someone to dig into how much is being sent to those still collecting Social Security at 130 and up. Sure helps with voting rolls favouring demoncrats too I suppose.
Seems the most likely scenario rather than being doled out to relatives. I can hardly imagine 20 million or so individuals collecting SS payments (which are mostly sent digitally now) whereas I can easily imagine these payments going into accounts that are pooled for unknown purposes. I'd call that a critical thinking brain as opposed to a conspiracy theorizing one.
I paid my taxes for 75 years and I had no idea that they were stealing from me in the millions! the stupidity in DC has run supreme and it is time to stop the con job. Fire all our life time politicians that have been only enriching themselves! Vote them out!
I guess we don't know enough, but perhaps there are many #s that have been generated that cannot be linked to a name? Or perhaps millions of people over the years have been pure inventions added to these rolls going back many decades.
From the chart, it’s apparent that there is no good system in place to ensure accurate data entry. This is pathetic, there is no excuse for such sloppy work.
I worked in specialty audit for Health and Human Services. The government knows how to conduct a rigorous audit. We did thousands of them each year with a relatively small staff of 14 employees. I am outraged that Social Security was complicit with this level of fraudulent payments. First rule of the job is to protect the trust fund for the American public. Taxpayers deserve better and those in charge need to be held accountable. This is not rocket science. Step 1: Query the database for suspected fraud and verify payment. Step 2: Send demand letters for refund of overpayments. Step 3: Refer fraud to OIG and FBI. This scale of fraud is going to need a genius from DOGE to create AI tools that reduce the time spent looking at each payment. A manual review of this many payments is impossible.
YES, PAYMENTS ARE ABSOLUTELY GOING TO DEAD PEOPLE. My ex-husband died in Switzerland on 12/28/2020, when he could not return here to the United States over the Covid pandemic due to travel restrictions. It was only until about 6 months ago that my daughter discovered that his bank was still receiving SSA payments. I personally called SSA to advise them of his death (I had tried over Covid, but there was a 3-hour wait at that time). I told them I could email a copy of the Death Certificate from the Swiss Consulate, or mail the original by U.S. Mail. The lady at the other end of the telephone line from SSA refused to provide me with an email or an address to send the original Death Certificate. She told me to come in personally to the local SSA office. I did so, and after 2 hours of waiting, I had to leave to pickup my grandson from school. The security guard told me to leave it in the "drop box" with notes, which I did. I never received a call from them, and I suspect they have done nothing. I am now wondering if someone is cashing in on these payments.....it is ridiculous that SSA refused to do nothing.
Jean - thx for sharing your story! So…are you just keeping the overpayments in the bank, so that you can pay it back once they finally get their data updated? I’m a tad confused, as you say, you are ‘wondering if someone is cashing in on these payments’ - don’t you have them in the bank? Sorry, but your comments confuse me a bit.
I am his ex-wife of 34 years....I have no idea where his bank is; I had nothing to do with any of his affairs. He must have listed our daughter as a contact, and she found out. I asked the SSA to demand all the payments be returned to the bank. I don't know if anyone else (girlfriend, or kids from prior marriages) has access to his acct.
You did not know about funds going into your deceased Husbands account? One month & you could have alerted the bank to just return any future deposits. But I understand the frustration working with any local SS office.
No, I did not know that funds were going to his account. I am his ex-wife of 34 years...my daughter found out because his car had an installment loan on it, and they told her it was being paid.
I've been an accountant all my career and I spent a lot of time in audit and forensic practices. Yes, this is all true, the level of gross incompetence and gross malice (the two go hand in hand - the incompetent ones are manipulated and controlled by the malicious ones) is spot on....
If in our government all payments for any agency are issued out of the treasury -
Every single thing they write checks for should be audited …. And accounted for …
I was explaining to my kids
Look around this room
Everything in it- we paid a tax on… that’s a lot cumulative money… we pay taxes every day …on everything
And what is the government providing you- as an American… in return?
And Who is accounting for all that money… where it goes and how it is spent?
Every American should ask for transparency on how their tax dollars are being spent …. It’s not a democrat or republican issue. Every person should care.
Thanks for asking these questions.... I'm sure I'm not the only one who's very interested to see what's going on with these most elderly elderlies. Wonder if they vote, too.
I suspect there’s some people who know what’s going on, and have been laundering the money somehow.
I also think it’s hilarious that a lot of software devs tried to make excuses for what COBOL was doing. While it is quite robust which is why it’s used, the biggest thing is the people attempting to make excuses for either negligence or malfeasance. At this point, one led to the other in my opinion.
What does COBOL have to do with it? I used to program in COBOL. In this case it sounds as if there is a bunch of bad data that got into the system either through keying errors or a process of bringing in some data from files without doing proper edits on the incoming data. That doesn't indicate a problem with the COBOL code.
Musk seems annoyed that nobody entirely understands what the code base is doing, but much of the code has probably been there since the early 1960s or so when the system was originally designed.
What is stranger to me is that nobody seemed to care that an IG pointed out that there were problems. But somebody would have to be assigned to fix it and probably there were other issues that needed to be worked on that were deemed more important. Data cleanup is somewhat of an art, but this problem sounds like a serious research project to see if these zombie recipients are actually receiving checks. A project like that needs funding. Did somebody ask for help and was turned down?
100% on the COBOL code. I am a current COBOL/Mainframe developer. What the software is coded in is completely irrelevant. The programs do what they are coded to do. Garbage in, garbage out, as the saying goes.
I hate when people who have no knowledge/experience with software blame COBOL or some other language in situations like this. It's not the problem of old software!
DoGE people were represented(or misrepresented) as being ignorant of how COBOL works, so it was another attempt to accuse DOGE of not knowing what they were doing.
I doubt if any of them know anything about COBOL. It's an easy language to make fun of because it's considered old and archaic but there's more COBOL code still in use than anyone can imagine, especially in financial institutions.
It's not just that replacing it takes time, trouble and money, but that COBOL works very well for systems with a ton of data to process. If it's not broke, no reason to fix it.
I imagine the SS COBOL is actually pretty good because they have had years and years to make sure the code works.
Yes, I cringe when I read someone mention COBOL still being in use, as if that's a red flag. I wrote tons of COBOL code. I still have customers who run COBOL systems on PCs, and have to maintain XP computers dedicated to those apps, since they're 32-bit and won't run on Windows 7 or above. They maintain those systems because they paid for them, and they still work just as well as ever. Replacing them would be extremely costly, only to get the same functionality (if that, since new systems would have to go through the break-in period of ironing out issues that arise).
Get off the COBOL bashing. It just shows ignorance. Might as well say my 50-year-old Echo chain saw, which works as well as any new saw, should be junked. Why? Eventually that saw will wear out. Code never does.
There are valid reasons to phase out COBOL systems. Programmers to maintain it are in short supply. Hardware to run it is in short supply. But those systems run as well or better than whatever would replace them
Many years ago I was in charge of porting a huge Cobol system from a mainframe to a mini-computer. There were a lot of compiler related problems around syntax and formatting, but I trained secretaries how to fix the errors because they could type fast. We ripped through the entire porting of the system in less than a 10th the time our contractors thought we could.
Cobol is great for running payment systems -- that is what it was designed to do.
The issue is not that it's Cobol, the issue is nobody cares.
BTW, government contractors make more money if the system doesn't work well...
When Canada went to digital tax submission I couldn't file because of a clerical input error at the tax branch. Took a while for the CRA to figure out where their error was.
Fire Commissioner of Social Security TODAY…very publicly. Then, stop all check above 105 and then wait to see who proves they’re older then that. Besides extended family members, I wonder how many nursing homes are collecting these funds from deceased consumers? 🤔
Noooo…the nursing homes collect each patient’s monthly payments to offset their bills. When patient dies, nursing home “forgets” to contact SS and keeps collecting the payments. Wouldn’t surprise me.
I had the exact same thoughts. Just because the SS number is active ( what does that actually mean?). Are there actual payments being sent to them. And why on earth would they accept such sloppy checks and balances to allow this to go on. Maybe by putting in a fake birthday you can get your illegals a social Security number so how many fraudulent Social Security numbers are there and why isn’t Social Security policing itself better? There is more to this story. Excellent place for DOGE to look
Stop sending the checks and see who comes forward to try to collect them
Excellent! Those who come forward will be an interesting bunch, of which 99.999999% are criminals. Order more handcuffs! Those who don't come forward should be removed within 2-4 weeks from every database, in particular databases for all other forms of public aid, voter rolls, and the IRS.
if they're stupid enough to come forward. as I wrote above, can't Treasury find out where the checks are being deposited and then obtain subpoenas to get the account holder information for further investigation?
I don't think that SSA issues checks anymore, everything is Direct Deposit (which should make it easier to find them). Go for it!
I will second that. . . oh, but Jjones beat me to it. Dang.
I will third that one!
😂😂👍
Great suggestion!!
A bunch of congressmen & women & their staff from both houses will the ones showing up!
That’s an idea really. You have to come in and show ID
Better yet a birth certificate!!
Really, now? My grandmother, no longer receiving Social Security FYI, had no birth certificate. When she applied for a passport, she used LdS baby blessing and baptismal records.
Why isn’t she receiving social security anymore?
Many recipients have to use baptismal and other church records, not everyone has a birth certificate.
Can't treasury find out WHERE the checks are being deposited and then obtain subpoenas to get the account holder information for further investigation and make arrests?
If the death didn't happen in an official setting (ie hospital), or not reported, then relative could easily keep on cashing the deceased's checks.
That happens a lot. They don’t report the death, bury them in the back nine, and go on cashing the checks as the POA.
Jeff mentioned that not all are receiving checks. But I heard an explanation on the radio that the numbers can be used for fraud, for illegals. Also to secure jobs, driver licenses, etc It would be easy to see how many names are assigned to one number and go from there!
Good idea.
Stop sending checks to whom? Everyone? Just people over a certain age?
Send them a letter, notify them they have 30 days to appear in person or their benefits are cut off.
How many people do you know over 100? I’ve seen about 3 in the local paper in the last year, so start there. And they where exactly 100 years old by a few days.
I suspect that whoever endorses this idea will want to just cut off anyone over a certain age, just so long as they themselves are eligible LOL.
EXCELLENT IDEA. KUDOS!!
That pretty clever!!
In the category of "too unbelievable to be true," I recall working on a ranch in my teens. One of my jobs was felling timber to be used for fencing. In this task, I would swing a double-bladed axe (with the skill of a sixteen-year-old). The ranch had one power chainsaw that was always used by one of the other teenaged "ranch hands." At lunch one day I remarked to my boss that with an axe I could out-perform the chainsaw. In other words, I was one helluva legendary woodsman due some praise. He guffawed and challenged me to a competition, which I promptly won. My axe beat the chainsaw. He sped off for town to see the chainsaw dealer. Tuns out they had put the chain on backwards! It was cutting with the dull side. That seems to be an apt metaphor for the government. They have all the chains on backwards.
Great story! It's got me smirking and shaking my head. It's a dang good thing you announced that you could beat the chainsaw. Your boss should have given you a bonus and the poor guy who'd had to use the dull-side chainsaw should have given you his earnings for a week because your brag ended up making his job so much easier.
OOOOoooh, that one is priceless! Ha!
You may often be right but nothing is 100% true all of the time. Our National Park system relies on highly skilled search and rescue, back country rangers, experienced historians and guides, etc. for just one example...our thousands of aircraft aloft every day need FAA controllers and TSA personnel to prevent hijackings, collisions, etc. for just two examples.
It’s my opinion- it’s rarely the boots on the ground - hard working every day people- committing these kind of frauds and crimes …
it’s much further up the food chain… it’s the government leadership themselves …. Who have their finger on the scale …
I think we may be starting to understand how all the congressional nitwits became multimillionaires.
True, yet they are being punished for the sins committed far above their levels.
And they know it too.
LOL!
😂🤦🏼♀️
The lack of flagging social security numbers for people who are deceased would NOT be limited to those over 100 years old. People of all ages die every day. I think more digging is needed to get to the bottom of this. Wouldn't the majority of people report a social security check arriving for a deceased person? I've never heard anyone I know mention that they are still getting checks for their loved one.... I don't doubt that excess funds are being wasted here though. What a mess.
Social Security benefits are supposed to cease immediately upon notice of death which is sent by funeral parlors to the SSA by law.
When my father passed,I specifically remember having to contact Social Security, at which point they clawed back their last payment to him. Has this changed sin e 2012 that funeral homes now report?
Funeral homes are required to report. This happened to everyone I know who died. They claw back that final payment while the body is still warm…believe me.
If it did change it needs investigating to see why.
Could be COVID deaths
Does everyone use a funeral home?
Not sure how you could avoid it.
I’m guessing you live in an urban area. The answer is simple: bury the body in the back 40 and keep cashing the checks.
Actually I live in a very rural area of northern Pennsylvania in a village with fewer than 600 residents.😁
Just like the ERIC using the SS death index is to report to the member states so dead voters can be removed from voter rolls. Not happening in CO, I can tell you that! The government needs to get these databases talking to each other without human involvement other than input. I would imagine that is doable.
Our systems haven’t been updated in decades for a reason, financial fraud & voter fraud is much easier using medieval technology.
Really? Thanks, did NOT know that!
It is heartening to see someone on one of these sites admit that they do not "know" everything, thank you.
Different system, or lack thereof 100 years ago!
Exactly Jayeson V
A lot are sent overseas and those funeral homes never contact anyone
Need more data in order to have an opinion on this…source? Specifics?
what is your proof?
My job experience of decades.
If someone is collecting/living outside the US and dies, there are many countries that don’t feel the need to follow another country’s protocols. There’s nothing that compels them to. Some countries do not have the same infrastructure to do so. War zones for instance, or not computerized or it takes a long time just to get a formalized death certificate or they aren’t friendly with that other country.
Not every country does, can or feels like notifying US Social Security. Or any other country’s, as well.
Thank you and in my experience, less than 2% of benefits went outside the US and most of those were sent to Canada and Mexico, the Philippines may indeed be problematic - I still say how does simply defunding whole entire departments of government overnight make anything work better?
Ah, a Democrat voter self identifies. First you identify mission critical departments ( military, hospitals, etc. & keep paying them) Then you prioritize departmentsv to defund them & stop paying people . You will find out what you can do without, or the employees or beneficiaries let you know that they need it and haven’t found another way to get it.
Somehow get the names of these centenarians and cross reference them with the voter rolls. That might be enlightening.
We need civil service employees like it or not, to do these things and the meat cleaver style of burning all programs to the ground will make it impossible to do even simple tasks.
They need software that can manage the whole system, from receiving death notices to removing the dead person from all data bases. Make it so automatic and locked down that it is not hackable and does not require humans to input the info. A fortune of taxpayer money has been stolen - for YEARS. Wow.
No wonder SS is bankrupt. They have been allowing the theft to continue for years.
You are making a serious and unfounded assumption based upon click bait...the system is funded by the Social Security Trust Fund, which is not bankrupt and many politicians have greedy eyes on it for illegal uses. They feed you clickbait because they do not want the FICA tax base level increased which would fully fund the system. If you ever had a job with FICA deductions from your pay, you and your employer have paid into this fund.
Your reply displays a level of trust in human nature that is unwarranted and denies the historical record and everyone’s lived experience. If’s have identified the problem, the implications are obvious; no efforts have been made to confirm or refute that monies are going out fraudulently, nor has anything been done to resolve the problem (implying that it is either not a priority or it is seen as a feature), plus. it has gotten worse, right?
Actuarially it is predicted to go bankrupt in the next decade or two IIRCC. (I wonder if that takes into account these bogus accounts (more ‘active’ accounts than the total population of the USA— just like states with more registered voters than voting age citizens)
I have free time. Lots of people do. I'm betting retirees would happily volunteer to scrub those filthy SSA records!
I will volunteer too. . .
you have to prove to us that we can trust you first
Well, we know that we can’t trust civil service employees, so we are no worse off.
Me too!!! I will volunteer.
How do we know you are trustworthy with our data, civil servants have to pass background checks and our watched quite closely at the lower pay grades I know this from my personal direct experience.
I certainly do agree that pay grades above GS 12 or GS 13 need some serious culling and I fully support that.
So you were a civil servant? Do I understand that correctly? And you're wondering if I'm trustworthy? To borrow a line from VP Vance, "Do you HEAR yourself, Margaret?"
"Margaret" seriously? I find your lack of research and knowledge kind of funny, you are certainly not alone. It's much easier to blame and scapegoat other people when you are not happy with the way that things are.
Most of the people being cleaved, as you put it, are extra expenses that do not add any value to the American people. Quite the opposite, they are a drain on our resources & tax dollars, which cause us to pay more in taxes in order to pay them. Cutting the fat is necessary to get to a baseline of what’s needed, and what wasn’t. I’m personally sick of paying billions for agencies like the DOE to indoctrinate our children (& dumb ass adults) with their Marxist/Communist America hating ideologies.
When my mother passed in 2007, it was only a matter of a few weeks when I received a letter from SSA requesting that I send back the money she had received that month - or else. That was too long ago to recall the consequences, but I did not argue. Is that still occurring once confirmation of death is received by SSA or is that "too much trouble?" I read Childers faithfully - he's entertaining and writes on a wide range of topics. I highly recommend him. I am also enjoying your new focus
, John!
Yes, that is still happening. Believe me, it is not ‘too much trouble’ for SS to claw back that final benefit. Talk to folks who have had a loved one pass. Same story with everyone.
I think the implication is that these phantom recipients are part of some organization’s side project for funding and possibly thwarting elections - probably not just a gargantuan collection of individual fraudster relatives.
I don't know how the system operates elsewhere, but here in South Texas when my first wife applied for SS in June after she turned 65, it took two months for it to process. She got a check in August. She died in September, and the SS clawed back the direct deposit for September.
Same thing with my second wife, who died in May, and the May check was clawed back. So at least in some places the system seems to be working.
The State doesn’t matter. What you describe is the procedure for the entire USA.
Exactly right, unfortunately today's internet allows about roughly 80 per. cent of all posts to go unchecked for accuracy.
Yes. Same thing happened with my grandmother recently. Had to send back last payment that was received -the month after her death. Because we hadn’t gotten all her paperwork finalized that quickly
So … all these centarians are likely a grift…. They need to find out where the money went and also send a nasty letter requiring they send it all back!
The majority of people would report that, but there is fraud, particularly in foreign countries where if people can still access a bank account of an American who retired abroad and won't notify anyone of a death. There was a case like that that I know about because it was my brother-in-law's dad who died while living in the Philippines and the locals didn't report it.
I'm guessing there are extensive fraud rings. They're likely much more of a problem than individuals continuing to collect the checks of deceased family members.
I worked with the Social Security Administration back in the 1970s and 80s and every region had fraud investigators who were looking at and even making arrests for these kinds of things...the real waste in government, in my opinion, is in the upper ranks of obscure "Empire Builders" who create sub staffs around themselves to support their own GS-15 and above, salaries...unfortunately the DOGE approach simply cuts off the head to save the body..creating real dangers to the economy among other things.
70's and 80's? Are you kidding; you are comparing apples and oranges. This ain't grandmas Govenmnt. Get on board with whats happening today. There is fraud in SSN; why can't you admit it? That's like saying I played basketball back in the 70's and am still playing at that level. You don't know anything more than any of us here. Good grief.
Obama uses the social security number of someone born in Connecticut and deceased in early 1900s or before. (See Susan Daniels.) I wonder how many people are involved in a similar scenario. Alive but dead and getting benefits.
My conspiracy theory brain has to ask the question, is this another method of funding the Deep State? Hopefully Trump will get someone to dig into how much is being sent to those still collecting Social Security at 130 and up. Sure helps with voting rolls favouring demoncrats too I suppose.
Recall that as Gary Webb showed 20+ years ago, the CIA has been in the dope business for many long decades for “supplemental funding”
Seems the most likely scenario rather than being doled out to relatives. I can hardly imagine 20 million or so individuals collecting SS payments (which are mostly sent digitally now) whereas I can easily imagine these payments going into accounts that are pooled for unknown purposes. I'd call that a critical thinking brain as opposed to a conspiracy theorizing one.
I would start with 115. Stop sending the money and see who complains.
"get someone" ??? . . . yep, Big Balls will be digging. . .
If the chart is correct … and it was a $1200 a month SS benefit…
It would be a 200 billion dollar a year grift…. Going somewhere
I paid my taxes for 75 years and I had no idea that they were stealing from me in the millions! the stupidity in DC has run supreme and it is time to stop the con job. Fire all our life time politicians that have been only enriching themselves! Vote them out!
Millions. They got me for a lot more. Seems like billions are missing. And that is not counting the trillions spent on DOD black sites.
Not just taxes. DOD also sells illegal drugs. Users steal and fence stuff to pay for them.
Hahaha, I want to know who the 1 person on the list is who's between 360-369 years old!
My money's on witch-obsessed Cotton Mather (born 1663). Allegedly died in 1728 but maybe not...
well, actually, it is impossible to have an age past about 140 years as the SSA has only been around since what 1935, so what's up with most of those?
Inaccurate data entry, with no system to check for accuracy. This is apparent. And shameful.
Actually it's 1937, you are right about the impossible excess age.
Yeah, but SSNs can be assigned at any time.
I tried to take that into account. I added 50 years (old) to the total of 2025 - 1935 . . . (90 yrs): 50 +90= 140
Hey, I didn't just fall off the turnip truck!
I guess we don't know enough, but perhaps there are many #s that have been generated that cannot be linked to a name? Or perhaps millions of people over the years have been pure inventions added to these rolls going back many decades.
Please do research before making claims, issuing numbers does indeed require proof.
Not just witches; he started the vaccination craze.
From the chart, it’s apparent that there is no good system in place to ensure accurate data entry. This is pathetic, there is no excuse for such sloppy work.
Johnny B. Methuselah
Sasquatch? Probably wouldn't have an SSN so I'm going with a spiritual adept who can materialize at will.
I worked in specialty audit for Health and Human Services. The government knows how to conduct a rigorous audit. We did thousands of them each year with a relatively small staff of 14 employees. I am outraged that Social Security was complicit with this level of fraudulent payments. First rule of the job is to protect the trust fund for the American public. Taxpayers deserve better and those in charge need to be held accountable. This is not rocket science. Step 1: Query the database for suspected fraud and verify payment. Step 2: Send demand letters for refund of overpayments. Step 3: Refer fraud to OIG and FBI. This scale of fraud is going to need a genius from DOGE to create AI tools that reduce the time spent looking at each payment. A manual review of this many payments is impossible.
Complicit…. No- likely INTENTIONAL FRAUD
I wanna know where the money went and is going.
YES, PAYMENTS ARE ABSOLUTELY GOING TO DEAD PEOPLE. My ex-husband died in Switzerland on 12/28/2020, when he could not return here to the United States over the Covid pandemic due to travel restrictions. It was only until about 6 months ago that my daughter discovered that his bank was still receiving SSA payments. I personally called SSA to advise them of his death (I had tried over Covid, but there was a 3-hour wait at that time). I told them I could email a copy of the Death Certificate from the Swiss Consulate, or mail the original by U.S. Mail. The lady at the other end of the telephone line from SSA refused to provide me with an email or an address to send the original Death Certificate. She told me to come in personally to the local SSA office. I did so, and after 2 hours of waiting, I had to leave to pickup my grandson from school. The security guard told me to leave it in the "drop box" with notes, which I did. I never received a call from them, and I suspect they have done nothing. I am now wondering if someone is cashing in on these payments.....it is ridiculous that SSA refused to do nothing.
Jean - thx for sharing your story! So…are you just keeping the overpayments in the bank, so that you can pay it back once they finally get their data updated? I’m a tad confused, as you say, you are ‘wondering if someone is cashing in on these payments’ - don’t you have them in the bank? Sorry, but your comments confuse me a bit.
I am his ex-wife of 34 years....I have no idea where his bank is; I had nothing to do with any of his affairs. He must have listed our daughter as a contact, and she found out. I asked the SSA to demand all the payments be returned to the bank. I don't know if anyone else (girlfriend, or kids from prior marriages) has access to his acct.
You did not know about funds going into your deceased Husbands account? One month & you could have alerted the bank to just return any future deposits. But I understand the frustration working with any local SS office.
No, I did not know that funds were going to his account. I am his ex-wife of 34 years...my daughter found out because his car had an installment loan on it, and they told her it was being paid.
I’m so sorry. Thank you for clarifying.
I've been an accountant all my career and I spent a lot of time in audit and forensic practices. Yes, this is all true, the level of gross incompetence and gross malice (the two go hand in hand - the incompetent ones are manipulated and controlled by the malicious ones) is spot on....
Here’s my question
If in our government all payments for any agency are issued out of the treasury -
Every single thing they write checks for should be audited …. And accounted for …
I was explaining to my kids
Look around this room
Everything in it- we paid a tax on… that’s a lot cumulative money… we pay taxes every day …on everything
And what is the government providing you- as an American… in return?
And Who is accounting for all that money… where it goes and how it is spent?
Every American should ask for transparency on how their tax dollars are being spent …. It’s not a democrat or republican issue. Every person should care.
and those who do NOT care, should NOT be allowed to vote.
MY question: How can that be tested for?!
If they don't care, they also likely don't vote, we never get over about 70% of eligible voters to even bother.
Right on, please stop the labelling of anyone you disagree with- let's work with some unity for the good of us all.
After seeing there is one of us over 360 years old, all I can say is I'll have one of what she is having.
🤣
Thanks for asking these questions.... I'm sure I'm not the only one who's very interested to see what's going on with these most elderly elderlies. Wonder if they vote, too.
Yes, the mother of all frauds, so what's going to be done about it!
I suspect there’s some people who know what’s going on, and have been laundering the money somehow.
I also think it’s hilarious that a lot of software devs tried to make excuses for what COBOL was doing. While it is quite robust which is why it’s used, the biggest thing is the people attempting to make excuses for either negligence or malfeasance. At this point, one led to the other in my opinion.
What does COBOL have to do with it? I used to program in COBOL. In this case it sounds as if there is a bunch of bad data that got into the system either through keying errors or a process of bringing in some data from files without doing proper edits on the incoming data. That doesn't indicate a problem with the COBOL code.
Musk seems annoyed that nobody entirely understands what the code base is doing, but much of the code has probably been there since the early 1960s or so when the system was originally designed.
What is stranger to me is that nobody seemed to care that an IG pointed out that there were problems. But somebody would have to be assigned to fix it and probably there were other issues that needed to be worked on that were deemed more important. Data cleanup is somewhat of an art, but this problem sounds like a serious research project to see if these zombie recipients are actually receiving checks. A project like that needs funding. Did somebody ask for help and was turned down?
100% on the COBOL code. I am a current COBOL/Mainframe developer. What the software is coded in is completely irrelevant. The programs do what they are coded to do. Garbage in, garbage out, as the saying goes.
I hate when people who have no knowledge/experience with software blame COBOL or some other language in situations like this. It's not the problem of old software!
DoGE people were represented(or misrepresented) as being ignorant of how COBOL works, so it was another attempt to accuse DOGE of not knowing what they were doing.
I doubt if any of them know anything about COBOL. It's an easy language to make fun of because it's considered old and archaic but there's more COBOL code still in use than anyone can imagine, especially in financial institutions.
It's not just that replacing it takes time, trouble and money, but that COBOL works very well for systems with a ton of data to process. If it's not broke, no reason to fix it.
I imagine the SS COBOL is actually pretty good because they have had years and years to make sure the code works.
Yes, I cringe when I read someone mention COBOL still being in use, as if that's a red flag. I wrote tons of COBOL code. I still have customers who run COBOL systems on PCs, and have to maintain XP computers dedicated to those apps, since they're 32-bit and won't run on Windows 7 or above. They maintain those systems because they paid for them, and they still work just as well as ever. Replacing them would be extremely costly, only to get the same functionality (if that, since new systems would have to go through the break-in period of ironing out issues that arise).
Get off the COBOL bashing. It just shows ignorance. Might as well say my 50-year-old Echo chain saw, which works as well as any new saw, should be junked. Why? Eventually that saw will wear out. Code never does.
There are valid reasons to phase out COBOL systems. Programmers to maintain it are in short supply. Hardware to run it is in short supply. But those systems run as well or better than whatever would replace them
Many years ago I was in charge of porting a huge Cobol system from a mainframe to a mini-computer. There were a lot of compiler related problems around syntax and formatting, but I trained secretaries how to fix the errors because they could type fast. We ripped through the entire porting of the system in less than a 10th the time our contractors thought we could.
Cobol is great for running payment systems -- that is what it was designed to do.
The issue is not that it's Cobol, the issue is nobody cares.
BTW, government contractors make more money if the system doesn't work well...
When Canada went to digital tax submission I couldn't file because of a clerical input error at the tax branch. Took a while for the CRA to figure out where their error was.
Fire Commissioner of Social Security TODAY…very publicly. Then, stop all check above 105 and then wait to see who proves they’re older then that. Besides extended family members, I wonder how many nursing homes are collecting these funds from deceased consumers? 🤔
Dead people are disposed of as medical waste?
Noooo…the nursing homes collect each patient’s monthly payments to offset their bills. When patient dies, nursing home “forgets” to contact SS and keeps collecting the payments. Wouldn’t surprise me.
I had the exact same thoughts. Just because the SS number is active ( what does that actually mean?). Are there actual payments being sent to them. And why on earth would they accept such sloppy checks and balances to allow this to go on. Maybe by putting in a fake birthday you can get your illegals a social Security number so how many fraudulent Social Security numbers are there and why isn’t Social Security policing itself better? There is more to this story. Excellent place for DOGE to look