From Nextgov/FCW:
After installing anti-fraud checks for benefit claims made over the phone early last month, the Social Security Administration is considering walking back the policy after finding only two cases that had a high probability of being fraudulent.
The anti-fraud tool set up last month after weeks of changes to the agency’s telephone policies has slowed retirement claim processing by 25% and led to a "degradation of public service,” according to an internal May document obtained by Nextgov/FCW that examined potentially cutting the anti-fraud tool for phone claims.
Under the new policy, the agency found that only two benefit claims out of over 110,000 had a high probability of being fraudulent — and they aren’t guaranteed to be so. Less than 1% of claims were flagged as even potentially fraudulent at all.
“No significant fraud has been detected from the flagged cases,” the internal document said.
The attention to fraud, however, did cause delays, as SSA changed its phone procedures to add the checks on the backend. ...
Republicans know to a moral certainty that there is massive fraud at Social Security and they will stop at nothing to find it even though all their efforts keep producing nothing of consequence. Pointless delays to others are a small price to pay for one's ideological beliefs. Accepting the truth that fraud is relatively rare at Social Security and that there are well-tested systems in place to detect the fraud that does exist is unacceptable to them.
They know there’s no appreciable fraud, just as they know there’s no significant voter fraud
ReplyDeleteIt's almost impossible to convince someone who has been conned into a false belief, that they've been duped. How much waste in resources and abuse of the public through delayed claims processing has this latest delusion cost us?
ReplyDeleteLeland is on Linked-In and posted a rebuttal which didn't make a lot of sense but it's there for you to see.
ReplyDeleteIf anyone else posted screenshots of internal sensitive information, they would be fired.
DeleteThe waste, fraud, and abuse is that ANY government benefits are still being provided to the general public.
ReplyDeleteThe only way we are going to colonize Mars, and ultimately the universe, and save humanity is if we get rid of all of the waste, fraud and abuse.
All of it. Medicaid. Medicare. Food stamps. Social Security. Foreign policy. Environment. Safety. Road. Child care. School.
All of it is fraud. All of it is waste. All of it is abuse.
We simply cannot afford this continued mis-pending when we need the money for spacey ships so that people can travel to the red planet and die there from radiation poisoning.
Also, we need more Trump resorts in foreign lands. That's critical, too.
Well put. Its a weird fetish of their mindset. They literally see fraud everywhere and also invent magic math to assert that “stopping fraud” will improve budgets
ReplyDeleteSome claim many gop have this line duplicitously to dupe dumb people. Seems to work.
I wonder if a class action lawsuit is possible against DOGE and the Republican Party for making baseless allegations and turning the lives of SSA employees and recipients upside down.
ReplyDeleteLeland Dudek should headline the lawsuit…
ReplyDeleteSSA’s inspector general did recommend that the agency beef up security controls around direct deposit changes in 2012, although direct deposit fraud that happens over the phone is less than 0.0003% of total benefits.
After publication, Leland Dudek, the agency’s former acting commissioner who is now a senior advisor at SSA, told Nextgov/FCW that “in the last 30 days SSA stopped 20k fraudulent attempts” across “all transactions that involve direct deposit, which includes first time claims” across both the phone and internet. The document obtained by Nextgov/FCW referred exclusively to claims made over the phone. The agency didn’t respond to an additional request for comment after Dudek’s statement.
That toolset is coming out this weekend
ReplyDeleteSenator Chris Coons posted this:
ReplyDelete".0018% chance that a Social Security Claim is "likely fraudulent." We literally have a better chance of being hit by an asteroid. So why are Republicans letting Trump, Musk & DOGE destroy Social Security over it?"
https://bsky.app/profile/joncooper-us.bsky.social/post/3lpc7mvxjwk2p
He includes a post from Natalie Alms that says: "SCOOP: Since SSA installed new anti-fraud checks on claims made over the phone only 2 claims out of over 110,000 were found to be likely fraudulent, according to internal documents I obtained"
Of course this won't stop liars like Dudek and his fellow MAGA stooges hell bent on killing the agency!
There is massive small time fraud with SSI and other needs based programs. It's very common that SSI applicants and beneficiaries either lie or misstate the truth regarding living arrangements, resources, etc. it's probably not worth the huge additional resources needed to completely weed out this type of small time fraud.
ReplyDeleteExactly. It makes absolutely no sense to spend millions of dollars shaking down the poorest people for nickels and dimes worth of fraud.
DeleteA lot of this is caught at the RZs. That’s why we spend so much on program integrity workloads. People can’t keep their lies straight over the years and we can change anything we want to make an overpayment and recover the funds. Is it fraud? Possibly. But we don’t have to have intent for this, we just make the adjustment and recovery and move on.
DeleteOK Leland.
ReplyDeleteThe resource limits haven't been changed since the early 1980s. Update the amounts to reflect some semblance of modern reality and you'd eliminate 95% of the SSI "fraud". It's not remotely worth anyone's time to investigate 20$ worth of monthly income, the rules are outdated and onerous and cost more to administer than any potential savings is possibly worth. If DOGE was *actually* interested in efficiency, there's a great place to start. But we all know they're not, only inflicting pain and suffering on federal employees and the poorest citizens.
You got that right. The ridiculously inadequate $2K SSI resource limit forces people to act in a fiscally irresponsible manner. The resource limit should be raised enough to allow at least a several month rainy day fund for the average recipient.
DeleteThe $2000/$3000 Single/Couple resource limits haven't been raised since the 1983 amendments. At least they should be adjusted every year just like COLAs.
DeleteDOGE can't change things like resource limit or simplify rules.
DeleteSome errors/fraud in regards to income and resources can easily be attributed to misunderstanding or error on the part of the claimants. Errors in living arrangements, as far as to the person or persons living in the household and their relationship seemed more like deliberate fraud to me. I only handled T2 claims but ran into an SSI recipient that claimed a male with a different last name was a cousin. When the cousin died she produced an old marriage certificate and wanted survivor benefits.
Federal work culture is going to become like Soviet work culture with the old joke, "We pretend to work, and they pretend to pay us."
ReplyDelete