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May 21, 2022

Harsh Penalties For Overpaid Claimants Lead To Tumult At OIG

From the Washington Post:

Four years after her longtime partner died of kidney cancer, federal agents knocked on Gail Deckman’s door outside Chicago and told her she was in trouble: She had kept thousands of dollars in Social Security disability benefits that should have stopped when he died.

Deckman told the agents she thought the $1,400 check deposited each month into an account to which she had access was a payment for land her partner had sold in Michigan. She spent the money on rent and clothes and gifts for her grandchildren, she said.

The inspector general’s office, which investigates disability fraud and tries to recoup money for the government, ultimately charged her $119,392 — nearly three times what she received in error.

Deckman didn’t have the money. So the Social Security Administration garnished the entire $704 check she was going to receive every month when she retired from her minimum-wage job flipping burgers at the convenience store in her local Rebel gas station. She can apply for retirement in 2032 — when she’s 83. ...

The inflated fees were set in motion during the Trump administration, when attorneys in charge of a little-known anti-fraud program run by the inspector general’s office levied unprecedented fines against Deckman and more than 100 other beneficiaries without due process, according to interviews, documents and sworn testimony before an administrative law judge. In doing so, they disregarded regulations and deviated from how the program had recovered money since its inception in 1995, failing to take into account someone’s financial state, their age, their intentions and level of remorse, among other factors. ...

The escalating penalties created a giant jump — at least on paper — in the amount of money the inspector general could show lawmakers it was bringing in, according to interviews and sworn testimony obtained by The Washington Post. Fines as high as hundreds of thousands of dollars were imposed on poor, disabled and elderly people, many of whom had no hope of ever being able to pay.

A Chicago woman was fined $132,000 after wrongly receiving as much as $10,618 in benefits, according to internal data of penalties and assessments obtained by The Post. A Denver woman was sanctioned $168,000 after cashing as much as $14,960 in wrongly received checks. A New Jersey woman is on the hook for nearly $435,000 after she accepted about $47,000 in benefits but failed to report a $120,000 house she inherited from her father and car loans she co-signed for her children, on what she said was a lawyer’s advice. ...

The remarkable penalties led to tumult inside the Office of Inspector General Gail Ennis, where a whistleblower was targeted for retaliation, according to a ruling this month by the administrative judge at the Merit Systems Protection Board. ...

     The Chairmen of the Social Security Subcommittee and the Worker and Family Support Subcommittee  (which has jurisdiction over SSI) are calling for an investigation. There’s actually a process for investigating IGs.

11 comments:

  1. Just supports my view that the OIG reports, while likely based in fact, are often biased to make themselves look good. They don't necessarily provide any ameliorating context on how or why a problem occurs, just that it did/does, a just "the facts maam" but focused on proving just how smart they are and how much "value" they provide. Value being measured in "dollars saved" at the expense of about everything else. This obvious effort to cook the books on their perceived value just was too big and exposed the smarmy "political" bureaucracy underside of the OIG. We forget that they are a bureaucracy that behaves like they all do.

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  2. I read the article and it was revealing in many ways. Further follow-up and action is definitely required.

    But one of the cases cited really makes no sense. The woman in New Jersey was said to be receiving $1,600 in disability benefits per month which could only be Title II benefits. Why then would her inheriting a house or any other property have caused any problem?

    What may have happened is that she filed a concurrent claim and while paying the benefits the SSI portion was paid first and then would have been deducted from the Title II. The IG may be claiming that the SSI should not have been paid due to the inherited property, which depending on when inherited might be correct, but in that case, any amount not paid in SSI would have just meant greater benefits under Title II. Am I missing something here?

    Of course, this is a newspaper story and the facts may not be completely accurate, but as I see it, not only is the supposed fine excessive, there may not have really been an overpayment of benefits at all other than in a technical sense.

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    1. Hi there. Please tell me more about this as I wrote the article ? Thanks! I can be reached at Lisa.Rein@washpost.com

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    2. Is it really true that $1,600/month could only be Title II benefits in New Jersey? Isn't it possible that her monthly payment could be that high with her five children and a state supplement?

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  3. Did she not notice the source of the “land” payment was the U.S Treasury? I mean come on now. You do SSI long enough you hear all sorts of non-sense excuses for things. I do think the penalties are inflated but let’s not suggest she is without fault here.

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  4. re: $1600 SSI? Google is your friend - https://www.ssa.gov/pubs/EN-05-11148.pdf

    See, here is the context I said OIG routinely doesn't provide in their reports. They, like any "prosecutor" shapes the narrative stressing some things and ignoring others. It's their report, their words and their view of "the facts". I've been handed too many draft reports to react to to and too often would find the full story to be a bit more nuanced compared to what teh OIG presented. But nuance isn't sexy and it sounds like making excuses so SSA responses are often pretty rote. Which makes it look like OIG "gotcha".

    Read the OIGs semi annual reports to Congress. And consider them in light of teh fact they could be more puff pieces than anything else.

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  5. I like the idea of giving this issue to the Integrity Committee overseeing the IG community, but you should know that IG Gail Ennis sits on that Committee (see https://www.ignet.gov/cigie/committees/integrity-committee). That is the same as giving the entire henhouse to the fox.

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  6. Shameful as usual.

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  7. I'm sorry, but I've never seen a bank yet that doesn't annotate the source of a deposit on a bank statement. Deckman knew those funds were social security benefit deposits, and she spent them anyway. So, her guilt is not at all in doubt. That penalty was outrageous, though.

    It has been known for a long time within the agency that Ennis and her sycophants are pure toilet scum. They have no interest in justice, only in pushing their extreme ideology wherever they can as far as they can no matter the cost. In other words, typical Trump appointees whose intent is to poison everything they can possibly touch.

    The civil monetary penalty program as operated by SSA has never exactly been fair, but was apparently identified early on as an exploitable resource by the Trump-etts.

    Any lawyer representing alleged criminals against SSA should be aware of the CMP program and further how SSA is using it. An accused person should be fully informed and allowed to decide whether going to trial (even if it means some jail time) is worth avoiding the extreme price a civil settlement to avoid prosecution (which will expose them to the CMP law) could extract at this time.

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  8. I've never understood how the civil monetary penalty program is even legitimate as it directly contradicts the purpose of the program. If it is a serious concern as to fraud; jail. Otherwise, get the money back, either directly or through an overpayment. Trying to thread a needle as to how much a disabled/retiree can financially sustain is absurd.

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  9. Agreed. Just put them in jail!

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