TLDR: The second Trump administration, in its zeal to paint Social Security as a scam on the American public claim to have found records of dead people receiving benefits. Yes, this is similar to the imagined voter fraud where dead people voted for Biden, but that’s another story. Only problem, not everyone Trump, Musk, and the broccoli-heads at DOGE say are dead are in fact deceased.
I found a dead person on Social Security. Right here in Seattle, on Capitol Hill….
“You wake up one day and discover you’re dead,” Johnson told me. “It’s been truly surreal.”That’s the biggest difference — my deceased guy turns out to be very much alive. Musk is contending that hordes of dead people are listed as alive in the Social Security databases, and are fraudulently still drawing benefits (which the Social Security director disputes).
Johnson is 82 and still kicking. Yet sometime last month, someone or something led Social Security to both tag him as dead and start clawing back his benefits…
“We know this is a difficult time, and we’re here to help,” the bank wrote. “We received a request from Social Security Administration to return benefits paid to LEONARD A. JOHNSON’s account after their passing.”
“There’s nothing you need to do — we’ve deducted the funds from LEONARD A. JOHNSON’s account.”
Uh oh. It itemized how $5,201 had been stricken from their bank account, on the grounds that Ned wasn’t justified to get those benefits — because he was dead. That was for payments he’d received in December and January.
Ned found that his February Social Security check hadn’t been paid, and he’s yet to receive his March check, either. His Medicare insurance had been canceled. He also learned that when you die, your credit score gets marked as “deceased, do not issue credit,” which makes it tough to get a loan.
Read it all at https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/heres-a-dead-person-on-social-security-in-seattle-with-plenty-to-say/
