Social Security Administration paid at least $37M to dead vets

By Brian Seay

The Social Security Administration’s main campus in Woodlawn, Maryland. (Photo: Dennis Brack/Bloomberg News)
The Social Security Administration paid out more than $37 million to dead veterans, according to a new internal audit.
The SSA paid 3,925 beneficiaries who had dates of death in the Department of Veterans Affairs’ records, according to a report compiled by the agency’s inspector general. But that isn’t the end of it, as a sample of the audit found that some of the people flagged as dead by the VA were actually still alive.
“Based on our sample results, we estimate SSA issued about $37.7 million to 746 individuals after they died and will issue approximately $7.3 million more over the next 12 months if these discrepancies are not corrected,” the report says.
Since May 1991, the VA has provided the SSA with automated death records, which the SSA then has to independently verify. Once they do that, payment for those beneficiaries is terminated. But the system isn’t perfect. Sometimes people reported as dead are still alive, and other times, people who die aren’t reported.
In April 2016, the SSA obtained data from the VA identifying about 17 million dead individuals. The agency matched that data against SSA payment records and

Source: Guns.com