OIG Report On SSI Claimants With More Than One Car

      From a summary of a report by Social Security’s Office of Inspector General:

SSA considers recipients’ resources when determining eligibility for SSI. While SSA generally excludes one vehicle per household from countable resources, additional vehicles may affect a recipient’s eligibility for SSI payments. SSA relies on recipients to report the vehicles they own and changes in vehicle ownership.

We reviewed 208 SSI recipients to determine whether recipients accurately reported their vehicle ownership to SSA and whether the Agency properly valued multiple vehicles when recipients reported owning more than one.

Of the 208 SSI recipients we reviewed, 154 (74 percent)accurately reported their vehicle ownership. However, public records indicated 54 recipients (26 percent) owned vehicles they did not report. For 8 recipients, the additional vehicles caused their countable resources to exceed SSI eligibility limits, resulting in $40,474 in payments for which they were ineligible. Based on our results, we estimate SSA overpaid approximately 660 recipients $435,000 because inaccurately reported vehicle ownership affected their SSI eligibility. …

I once had a client on SSI with, I think it was 29 cars in his name. His history was that he bought the absolutely cheapest used car he could find and did no maintenance or repair on it. When the car stopped running, he would abandon it on his rural property.  He considered the cars worthless and he was probably right. He never turned in the titles on the cars. I told him to turn in the car titles and talk with Social Security. I knew that, at least, he would be eligible from that point on. Social Security agreed that the cars had been worthless and there was no overpayment. You may think this must have been some sort of scam but he seemed quite believable to me and to Social Security. Life is different in poor rural areas.

Pain Matters

      The New York Times has a piece out about a man who, after years of battling to get the workers compensation and Social Security disability benefits he deserved, committed suicide. The reason he had such a hard time getting benefits was that he had the misfortune of developing a chronic pain syndrome after a very real on the job injury. His MRIs and other tests were negative but he was still in horrible pain. Because his tests were negative his pain meant nothing to Social Security. However, if you’ve worked long with the Social Security disability program and take your work seriously you know there is such a thing as chronic pain syndrome and that it’s a terrible thing with little correlation to physical tests although it clearly correlates with psychiatric exams. Those psychiatric effects may be more a result of the pain than its cause. This man’s suicide is proof of the high stakes in Social Security disability determinations. 

OIG Concerned By AI Enabled Fraud

      From GovCio:

The Social Security Administration is coordinating with federal agencies to combat a growing threat from AI-enabled fraud as criminals increasingly use deepfakes and other emerging technologies to impersonate people and trusted institutions. 

As the federal government has moved quickly to adopt artificial intelligence, criminal groups have also embraced the technology, said Chad Bungard, chief strategy officer in SSA’s Office of Inspector General, at an event hosted by GovExec in Washington D.C. Tuesday. 

Bungard said rapidly advancing deepfake technology that can realistically mimic human voices and images has fueled fraud schemes targeting SSA. These schemes include attempts to change direct-deposit information, spoof identities and impersonate trusted institutions, sometimes using the names of real employees to appear legitimate. 

Citing data from Deloitte and Accenture, Bungard said losses from deepfake-enabled fraud are projected to reach $40.1 billion by 2027. 

“It’s something we have to take seriously,” he said. …

Surprised The Trump Administration Didn’t Pour It Down The Drain

      From a contracting notice posted by Social Security:

Request for Quotation for the disposal of surplus alcohol-based hand sanitizer for Social Security Administration (SSA) facilities nationwide at approximately 20 locations. SSA has a hazardous waste surplus of expired alcohol-based hand sanitizer from the COVID-19 epidemic, which requires disposal. The disposal must be completed in accordance with the laws as required by the Federal, State, and Local Environmental Laws.

Is This Accurate?

      I received this message from a reader.

In case you and NOSSCR are not aware of it, in the last few days SSA has reversed a long standing policy that will potentially have major implications and may introduce legal liability to 3rd party representatives. On claims, SSA will no longer recognize a protective filing for a spouse or children listed on a claim unless the NH puts a statement in the remarks of the application expressing an intent to file on behalf of the spouse/children. I haven't seen this POMS, and I don't know if it is being implemented retroactively or prospectively going forward. Legal reps might have liability if they list the spouse/kids but fail to add the intent to file language to the application remarks. This is obviously a thinly veiled attempt to deny a protective filing to spouses/children of people filing claims. The office I retired from told me they are planning a training session on it very soon.

POMS GN 00204.010 contains the new policy. It has apparently been in place since 04/27/2026. The prior policy applies up to 04/26/2026.

     The claims forms ask for a list of children and a spouse. I don’t know how you could not interpret that as an intention to file a claim for them. 

     There have been problems in the pst when a claimant fails to list all the children, usually for malicious reasons relating to a divorce, but sometimes because the child was born after the claim was filed. That problem is probably a direct result of the statute and regulations rather than anything intended to be harsh.

     If we’re talking about harsh and malicious, what the reader is talking about would definitely be a serious gotcha that I would call harsh and malicious. I have a hard time believing this could happen but it’s hard to put anything past this Administration. I think they could not prevail in Court on this.

Two Agencies With A Similar Problem

      From an article in the New York Times:

… The Trump administration has held up the publication of an annual Internal Revenue Service estimate of unpaid taxes, a delay that could mask the fiscal cost of the steep decline in the agency’s ability to audit the rich. 

The I.R.S. has long published an estimate of the tax gap, the amount of tax owed under existing law that goes uncollected each year.  … 

The shift comes after the Trump administration pushed out roughly a quarter of the I.R.S. work force and cut the agency’s budget, weakening the government’s ability to conduct time-intensive audits.  … 

The absence of an updated tax gap estimate is part of a pattern across the Trump administration, which has either stopped collecting or sought to change the measurement of federal data that scientists and other researchers have long relied on for a rigorous, unvarnished understanding of the country.  … 

An I.R.S. spokesman said the agency was updating the methodologies used to calculate the tax gap and would release the figure when it was ready. Mr. Bisignano, in a statement, said revenue from tax enforcement was increasing this year and did not depend on the number of auditors. … 

“Without a metric of the tax gap that is telling us in real time about trends in compliance and how they’re changing, I worry that it’s hard for policymakers to see the full swath of the damage that’s been done by the gutting of the agency,” said Natasha Sarin, a Treasury official during the Biden administration who has written extensively about the tax gap. “And, in fact, I worry that’s the point.” …  

In appearances before Congress in the spring, Mr. Bisignano, the first chief executive officer of the I.R.S., suggested that he was skeptical of the methodology behind the tax gap, saying that he wanted to focus on the subset of unpaid taxes that the I.R.S. could realistically collect. …

     Sound familiar? Cut staff to the point an agency cannot fulfill its core responsibilities, refuse to release statistics showing how bad things have gotten and try to come up with your own tortured statistics making it look as if things aren’t as bad as they really are. Bisignano is at the helm of two agencies doing this but it sounds like the problem is government wide.

And The Problem Will Just Get Worse Until The Agency Gets More Employees

      From an report by Social Security’s Office of Inspector General:

… To maintain accurate earnings information, SSA uses the earnings alert system to identify discrepancies between a recipient’s reported and actual wages. A discrepancy occurs when a recipient’s actual earnings differ from the earnings SSA used to calculate the SSI payment.

We identified 417,291 SSI recipients who had at least 1 pending earnings alert on their record as of September 2024. We randomly selected 100 of these recipients to determine whether SSA took appropriate action to resolve the alerts. 

SSA employees resolved earnings alerts for 20 of the 100 recipients we reviewed. However, Agency employees did not resolve earnings alerts for 80 recipients who had at least 1 earnings alert pending as of September 2024.

• For 63 recipients SSA employees did not start reviews of 37 earnings alerts and did not complete their reviews of 26 earnings alerts. As of April 2025, the 63 earnings alerts remained pending.
• For 17 recipients, SSA employees cleared the earnings alerts but did not verify and record all earnings that affected the SSI payment amounts.. their reviews of 26 earnings alerts. As of April 2025, the 63 earnings alerts remained pending.  …

Based on our sample results, we estimate SSA paid about 333,800 recipients approximately $1 billion that they would not have been eligible to receive had the Agency properly considered and fully developed their unreported earnings when it determined their SSI eligibility and associated payment amounts. .

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