According to the Detroit News, Jeffrey Walls kept telling Social Security that his Social Security check was lost or stolen. He kept asking for a replacement check and he kept getting them. He also kept cashing both checks. This happened 27 times before Walls was charged with making false claims.
I feel a GOP talking point coming on...
ReplyDelete27 months goes waaaaaay back into the Bush Administation so no blame can be laid for 12 months of Obama Adminisrtration.
ReplyDeleteThis adds to the need discussed for more audits, computer systems, training and common sense for staff (I have not yet read the article) and other methods to prevent fraud.
Common sense. I think that at every SSA field office at which I worked, there were benes who wd report a lost or stolen ck almost every month. After several reports, they were told to use a different address for mail or their benefits wd be suspended. Some did report a change of address, others simply stopped reporting non-receipt. Their records were flagged so that if they started going to other offices to file N/R reports, the staff there wd be aware of the problem.
ReplyDeletePoster#3 has it exactly right - common sense is the key. We know which claimants are most likely to report nonreceipts, and in some circumstances we can even tell you for a particular person when he/she is most likely to try to do it. Our office strictly adheres to the absolute LETTER of the Robinson-Reyf settlement, and management (surprisingly enough) backs us up. You might get one DCN out of us (as the settlement makes that pretty much impossible to prevent), but expect 100% collection out of a future check and you won't get another one for the next two years except under the most limited of circumstances as allowed within Robinson-Reyf.
ReplyDeleteIt also helps that our local police department assigned officers to work full time handling bad check cases for local businesses - when Treasury reclaims a check from a business due to a DCN, those businesses file charges. The perpetrators get arrested, are convicted, and serve jail time with restitution. Once this started happening and it got out in the community, our nonreceipts started going way down.
how big was the office; did his cousin work there? something isn't right.
ReplyDeleteHe was probably calling the 800#
ReplyDelete