SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
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.
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
Social Security Data Says 6.5 Million People in US Reached Age 112
|
Log In/Create an Account
| Top
| 24 comments
| Search Discussion
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
Forms follow function, and often obliterate it.
(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.