Civil Plaintiff

US Recovers $31 Million in Social Security Payments to Deceased Individuals

The U.S. government clawed back more than $31 million in Social Security payments that improperly went to dead people, a recovery that one official said Wednesday was “just the tip of the iceberg.”

The money was reclaimed as part of a five-month pilot program after Congress gave the Department of Treasury temporary access to the Social Security Administration ’s “Full Death Master File” for three years as part of the omnibus appropriations bill in 2021. The SSA maintains the most complete federal database of individuals who have died, and the file contains more than 142 million records, which go back to 1899, according to the Treasury.

Read more at AP News.

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