As El Rushbo might say, from the Groove Yard of Forgotten Favorites; here’s just one reason Social Security keeps sending checks to dead people:
Yep, the Social Security Administration reports 6.5 million active social security numbers for individuals over the age of 112. For Senator Franken (and others who are math impaired), there are less than 40 people worldwide who are at least 112 and still living. Given those facts, you’d think it would be pretty easy to dig through those active numbers, find out who they belong to, and arrest the fraudsters. My guess is that virtually no progress has been made on that issue since it was first reported two years ago.
I recall a case from a few years ago that highlights this problem. Social Security discovered they were still sending a monthly check to a man who was 117 years old. Problem was, he had died 40 years earlier; his son never reported the death and kept pocketing the monthly benefit check. The fraud wasn’t discovered until the son passed away in his 70s.
Multiply this example by thousands of times, and you begin to see the iceberg that is Social Security fraud.
Addendum: while the government admitted it had 6.5 million active social security numbers for individuals at least 112 years old, they never disclosed the number who were getting a check (I’m guessing thousands). And it’s a safe bet that many of those folks are still getting a monthly check, as they advance towards their 120th birthday (in the alternate universe of social security database maintenance and fraud prevention).
The do-nothing congress has such a long list of items needing attention and action.