Oct 13, 2024

SSA In The Middle

      From WKBN:

Some Ohio seniors say they are getting their Social Security payments garnished for COVID-19 Small Business Administration (SBA) loans they say they did not take out. 

Congressman Michael Rulli, R-6th District, is looking into the problem since he has learned of at least four cases of this happening to seniors in his district. His team said they are looking into these individual cases and have an issue with the SBA putting the burden of proof on seniors instead of the SBA, who Rulli accuses of having a “lackluster handling” of identity theft with the program.

Rulli said one message to his office involved a constituent who said that two SBA loans were fraudulently taken out in their name in 2021. That person said they provided SBA with the documents they requested, such as a police report and identification, in August 2024 and has yet to receive a response. …

     I don’t know what the process is like at SBA but there’s no way to contest this sort of thing at Social Security. 

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Yep. We have to comply with the order - end of story.

Anonymous said...

That's not a garnishment, it's a treasury offset. SSA won't even know it's happening.

Anonymous said...

This. SSA certifies the payment to the Treasury Department, and the SBA then intercepts the payment before it is paid via Treasury offset. As far as SSA is concerned, we paid the full benefit.

The only way SSA can even determine it is happening is that it gets courtesy copies of the offset letters from Treasury related to the offset that are stored in its ORS correspondence archives.