Texas Insider Report: DALLAS Texas The Social Security Administration (SSA) sent about 89000 stimulus payments of $250 each to dead and incarcerated people a new inspector-generals report has found says the Wall Street Journal.
- The agency was charged with distributing the one-time payments worth about $13 billion in total as part of the economic-stimulus package passed in February 2009.
- The inspector general found thatabout 72000 payments were sent by electronic-transfer and as checks to people who would have qualified to
receive them -- had they still been alive.
- The report said that of these payments about 55000 were sent because the recipients had died recently and the SSA had not been informed of their deaths by states families or funeral homes at the time the payments were sent.
- The remaining 17000 mistaken payments were attributed to the SSA failing to properly process death records thatit was aware of.
Another 17000 payments went to recipients who were in prison at the time the payment was made in May 2009.
Theres a startling bright spot in the report: The inspector general estimates that about 41000 of the payments were returned.
The downside: The SSA says that the stimulus package didnt include a provision allowing it to try to retrieve funds that were mistakenly sent out so it cant try to retrieve the rest of the money. Money transferred electronically may be sitting untouched in bank accounts of dead people.
The combined total of the mistaken payments is $22.3 million. About $12 million hasnt been returned.
Source: Louise Radnofsky Stimulus Checks Sent to the Dead Wall Street Journal October 7 2010
