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Americans are getting older, but not this old: Social Security records show that 6.5 million people in the U.S. have reached the ripe old age of 112. In reality, only a few could possibly be alive. As of last fall, there were only 42 people known to be that old in the entire world.
But Social Security does not have death records for millions of these people, with the oldest born in 1869, according to a report by the agency's inspector general.
Only 13 of the people are still getting Social Security benefits, the report said. But for others, their Social Security numbers are still active, so a number could be used to report wages, open bank accounts, obtain credit cards, or claim fraudulent tax refunds.
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Social Security Data Says 6.5 Million People in US Reached Age 112
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Forms follow function, and often obliterate it.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 16 2015, @11:37PM
If all those people were vampires then the Social Security Administration would be technically correct by not having their death records. But what are the chances that all 6.5 million of them became vampires?
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Monday March 16 2015, @11:46PM
If they were still blood-sucking (getting checks), I'd prefer if they were Highlander-grade Immortals.
After I while, there would one be one.
(Score: 2) by davester666 on Tuesday March 17 2015, @05:35AM
Well, if they are now vampires, they should have been issued death certificates, as, at least according to classic vampirism, you die and then arise some time later as a vampire.
(Score: 3, Informative) by c0lo on Tuesday March 17 2015, @12:28PM
But you still keep your SSN.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
(Score: 3, Interesting) by kaszz on Monday March 16 2015, @11:53PM
How else would letter agencies be able to enable their field people to live a cover life? ;)
(Score: 4, Insightful) by SrLnclt on Tuesday March 17 2015, @12:06AM
We can track tiny details of the lives of billions of people around the world. But we can't figure out a way to get dead people off of social security and registered voter lists.
Must be too busy thinking about all the children.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Snotnose on Tuesday March 17 2015, @01:16AM
I'm guessing this is from the 60 Minutes story last night. The main focus of that was live people being declared dead, mostly because someone typed in a dead person't SSN wrong. Social Security promptly sends death notices to every database it know about that this person has died, which means you can't access your bank account, use a credit card, or access your money in any other way.
What was laughable was they claimed something like a %0.03 error rate, not recognizing that that works out to tens or hundreds of people per year that get declared dead and have to spend years fixing the problem.
I came. I saw. I forgot why I came.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by frojack on Tuesday March 17 2015, @12:02AM
You would think that at age 100, with no claims to-date, they could just close the account, with a possibility to appeal. If nobody has filed for social security in 35 years since age 65, they aren't going to do so, and fraud becomes more likely day by day.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 17 2015, @12:47AM
> You would think that at age 100, with no claims to-date, they could just close the account, with a possibility to appeal.
They need to go further than just a possibility.
As always, the hard part is exception handling.
Given that old people are likely to have disabilities that make appealing difficult they would need to staff up a special group dedicated to handling such appeals in an expedited fashion and to make sure that if the person themselves were unable to appeal, it would be easy for a caregiver to do it for them. No jumping through hoops, either, the agency should be the ones jumping through any and all hoops. Have agents tasked with going to visit the person at their residence at the person's convenience and if they don't have sufficient ID, take a photo for the record and make a judgement call because if you've got some super old person chances are they really are the one. Also give out a big bonus, like $10K, for anyone who does appeal to compensate them for the hassle.
The goal isn't to have perfect enforcement, the goal is to reduce costs. So anything that nets a reduced cost is still a win. Better to err on the side of some fraud and really high overhead of verification then to let anyone who deserves their social security get screwed over because that can be the difference between life and death.
(Score: 4, Informative) by frojack on Tuesday March 17 2015, @01:26AM
Wait, you quoted me, but failed to read what I wrote.
I said "at age 100, with no claims to-date".
In other words, once they file a claim, we know the account is active, (perhaps not valid, but somebody is getting the money, and depositing the checks). The story itself says virtually nobody (13) of this 6.5 million is getting paid benefits. There is no massive outflow of money here.
Further I postulated waiting till 100 years of age WITH NO CLAIMS OF BENEFITS to declare them Dead-ish. So the forgetful well-to-do guy can spend is savings for 35 years after he turns 65 and still get his due benefits, when, at age 100 he finally figures out he should maybe file.*
Nobody is paying into these accounts, and nobody i drawing benefits. Its digital dead-weight. It probably costs nothing to keep these accounts on spinning storage. But having a policy for terminating dormant accounts would at least prevent organisations like Phys.org from publishing sensationalist stories about millions of 112 year olds.
* There are people who labor under the misconception that Social Security is welfare, and may be too proud to accept the money. But SS is an annuity. You pay for it all your working life. And even Warren Buffet cashes his social security check. He earned it.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 17 2015, @01:36AM
That all assumes the "no claims to date" is accurate.
Like I said, exception handling.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 17 2015, @12:48AM
Stop with an easy, and well thought out solution! This is a government problems, of course it will need a 1 billion dollar boondoggle fix! Maybe some sort of new SMART social security cards, with chips and bio-metrics adn a pulse reader. You must allow it to read your pulse every 24 hours or you will be declared dead.
(Score: 2) by Pslytely Psycho on Tuesday March 17 2015, @06:46AM
" You must allow it to read your pulse every 24 hours or you will be declared dead."
Or, time itself could become a currency!
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1637688/ [imdb.com]
Alex Jones lawyer inspires new TV series: CSI Moron Division.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Non Sequor on Tuesday March 17 2015, @01:07AM
The deal is that these are likely records that the SSA had less information on to begin with. I'm not sure the SSA would have a master table of all SSNs ever assigned going back to the 30s including a confirmed DOB.
The employees of some states and cities are not covered by Social Security for their employment. Additionally if you weren't working, you weren't reporting any information to the SSA. If a person dies and their only interaction with the SSA was being assigned an SSN, there is no account to close. All you know is that it should be treated as very odd if someone tries to apply for a benefit under an SSN with no work record attached to it.
The master death file is made up of confirmed deaths. I believe its primarily data collected in relation to a benefit ending or a survivor benefit becoming payable. As far as I know, there is currently no organized effort by the SSA to invalidate SSNs on other criteria and historically that hasn't been part of the SSA's job description.
All public sector workers probably have their wages reported to the SSA these days (since there are some adjustments to the benefit formula for people who work both a non-SS covered public sector job and an SS-covered job part time) and most people have at least some work history, plus administration is likely more proactive so this probably isn't an issue going forward.
Write your congressman. Tell him he sucks.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by frojack on Tuesday March 17 2015, @01:48AM
True, I think everybody in this day and age is eligible for some form of Social Security income or medical benefits. Even if they worked all their life for one government agency or another. Further, for some time now, 10 or 20 years, every baby gets an ssn. Its just automatic. I didn't get one till I got my first job.
So all these 112 year olds that they are carrying, who have NEVER filed for benefits, (and maybe didn't pay in) are older than my (departed) dad, having been born around 1903, and would have been 35-ish when Social Security was enacted.
So you are probably right, most of these people are/WERE ex-military careerists, government workers, and a few other corner-case people that some how got on the system but retired/died without the federal government ever being told, and no Social Security claims ever being processed.
But now, we can administratively assume the are dead, unless they have been receiving benefits for years. No need to check death certificates in every state. Not worth the effort.
Leaving them open just allows for fraud, as TFS clearly points out:
For example, nearly 67,000 of the Social Security numbers were used to report more than $3 billion in wages, tips and self-employment income from 2006 to 2011, according to the report. One Social Security number was used 613 different times. An additional 194 numbers were used at least 50 times each.
People in the country illegally often use fake or stolen Social Security numbers to get jobs and report wages, as do other people who do not want to be found by the government. Thieves use stolen Social Security numbers to claim fraudulent tax refunds.
Arbitrarily closing these 100 year old numbers for either wage reporting or benefit claims would flush out a lot of these cases.
Those people illegally using these numbers from 100-yo will never be able to draw on them, so it is clearly a NET GAIN to SSA never to close a number and let illegals and fraudsters contribute. I'm not convinced the SSA has any financial reason to close off these numbers.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by Non Sequor on Tuesday March 17 2015, @02:43AM
$3b divided by 67,000 is about $47,000. Additionally, only 194 of them were used more than 50 times. A substantial portion of the reported wages on these SSNs may be due to entry errors rather than fraud. No one corrects you if you write your SSN incorrectly on a form or if the data entry person misreads your writing.
If every time you gave an employer or a financial institution your SSN, they sent it to the SSA to ask if that SSN went with the name and DOB, it would be a different story.
And of course the SSA has no incentive to purge these. Their duty is to administer SS benefits, not to administer an index of living citizens for credit checking purposes. I'm not sure the SSA's administrative budget is in any way linked to FICA receipts though.
These aren't the only SSNs not attached to living people that aren't in the death file. They're only the obvious ones. To the extent that other entities depend on an SSN that isn't in the death file being treated as valid, publishing this list may help them, but ultimately what do you want to trigger when someone uses one of these SSNs for something? SSNs haven't been centrally validated in the past and I'm not sure you can transition into a centrally validated system by publishing invalidated SSNs.
Write your congressman. Tell him he sucks.
(Score: 3, Informative) by frojack on Tuesday March 17 2015, @03:23AM
Having employed more than a few people in my own business I can assure you an invalid SSN is indeed kicked back to the employer. It sometimes takes months. But it does come back. Happened twice to me. Two different guys. One turned out to be some guy on the lam. Too bad, because he was a cracker jack mechanic. The other turned out to be an illegal, Canadian, but we worked with him to get his green card and a valid SSN. A good programmer. Could have gotten a legal work visa just for the asking in those days.
Now if they are illegals, sharing a borrowed SSN, nobody says boo about that.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by Non Sequor on Tuesday March 17 2015, @10:29AM
I know that I see SSNs change a decent bit in data sets I work with based on wage reporting. Sometimes they change shortly after hire. Occasionally they change at retirement.
My suspicion would be that any validation done by the SSA and IRS is based on the master death file plus a patchwork of fraud red flag rules which is why it doesn't trigger immediately.
Write your congressman. Tell him he sucks.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday March 17 2015, @11:18AM
The employees of some states and cities are not covered by Social Security for their employment.
Also railroad employees. My dad and grandfather got a railroad retirement benefits check, no SS. I do not know if they had SS numbers or the RRRB issued SS numbers for them or ...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railroad_Retirement_Board [wikipedia.org]
I've also heard clergy don't get SS.
(Score: 2) by tibman on Tuesday March 17 2015, @12:16AM
If they aren't paying taxes then...
SN won't survive on lurkers alone. Write comments.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Snotnose on Tuesday March 17 2015, @01:09AM
60 minutes did a story on it last night. What they're doing is comparing old people on SS to when they last used Medicare. If they haven't seen a doc or filled a prescription in 3 years they contact the person, and it snowballs from there.
What was funny was the woman who had been collecting her dead mother's benefits for 20-30 years. She's now a felon, saying "I've never done anything wrong in my life, now I'm going to prison". Uhhh, lady? Your mom died and you were spending her bennies. Too bad, so sad, enjoy the clink.
I came. I saw. I forgot why I came.
(Score: 2) by Hartree on Tuesday March 17 2015, @03:31AM
It's just The Howard Families [wikipedia.org] have screwed up on their "Masquerade".
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Tuesday March 17 2015, @08:09AM
Care to elucidate?
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 4, Interesting) by bradley13 on Tuesday March 17 2015, @12:41PM
When I went back to the USA to close down my mother's affairs after her death, I dutifully reported her death to all sorts of government agencies: local, county, state and federal.
Many of the offices I contacted, especially the local ones, acted like this was really weird. Just as an example, the voter registration people were obviously not used to the idea of someone being removed from the list of registered voters - it took a real effort on my part to get them to accept the death certificate and remove my mother's name from the rolls. I can only assume that this means lots of those 112-year-olds are still voting regularly; certainly, there is no way to rule it out.
On the other hand, some of the companies I reported her death to were downright predatory: trying to see if they could get some extra money out of bereaved people who maybe weren't up to dealing with an argument. GMAC (now called "Ally Financial" I think) was the worst. She had leased a car; as I understand it, a lease terminates on death as long as you promptly return the leased vehicle. This was very unclear in the lease itself (probably deliberately), but I have two friends in the business who confirmed it. Regardless, GMAC/Ally plagued us for months, claiming that we owed them for all the remaining years on the lease.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.