Social Security Employee Caught After Stealing Over $100,000 In SSI Benefits

      From Syracuse.com, whatever that is:

A 34-year-old Syracuse man and former federal employee admitted Thursday to stealing more than $100,000 in Supplemental Security Income benefits, according to federal prosecutors.

Sean Okrzesik pleaded guilty to theft of government property and aggravated identity theft, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of New York.

While Okrzesik was employed by the Syracuse office of the Social Security Administration, he opened bank accounts using the names and social security numbers of people who receive SSI benefits, according to federal prosecutors. ...

Okrzesik used the money to pay for video gaming equipment, a custom suit, jewelry, airline tickets to the Caribbean and online gambling, according to prosecutors.

In all, Okrzesik took $103,798.77 in benefits, prosecutors said.

He faces up to ten years in prison, a fine of up to $250,000 and a term of up to 3 years of supervised release for the two counts of theft of government property, according to federal prosecutors. ...

A Sad Story That Happens All The Time

The two sisters

    From the Albany Times Union:

A Greene County woman, who is the estranged sister of Grammy Award-winning singer Mariah Carey, is seeking help in getting her Social Security benefits restored after they were cut to $30 a month in an apparent error by the Social Security Administration.

Alison Carey, 60, says she has struggled with homelessness and the impacts of a brain injury she received from a home-invasion robbery.

She was getting $794 a month in Supplemental Security Income (SSI) until she received a letter dated July 20 saying her benefits were being cut because of an overpayment.

The letter from the Social Security Administration (SSA) claims Carey was incorrectly paid $3,176 from April through July when she was in a "medical facility" and should have only been receiving $30 a month. Carey's SSI was then reduced to $30 a month to pay back the SSA.  …

     This is SOP. Declare the overpayment but don’t explain it. Seize the entire monthly check leaving the claimant destitute. Don’t worry about whose fault it was. Don’t even try too hard to make sure there really was an overpayment. Just inflict maximum punishment on the claimant. Make them figure out how to cope. And, of course, make it incredibly hard to contact the agency to try to find out what you can do. 

    And estrangement from family? That's kinda common for those suffering from brain damage and other forms of mental illness.

      Never fear, though. The problem is now solved for Ms. Carey. All it took was publicity. How do we get publicity for every claimant mistreated by Social Security?

Reopening Plans -- And Why Reopening Matters

      From Reuters:

The Social Security Administration has announced plans to begin reopening its vast national network of field offices to the public in January following a 20-month COVID-19 shutdown. The reopening will give the agency a needed opportunity to improve public service, but also presents some thorny challenges. ...

Processing of Social Security retirement benefits and Medicare claims has not been impaired during the office shutdown, agency records show. But there was a sharp drop in 2020 in benefit awards for SSI (down 18%) and disability insurance (down 10%).

“The most serious problems are related to the drop in awards for the most vulnerable people,” said David Weaver, a former associate commissioner in Social Security’s Office of Research, Demonstration and Employment Support. “It’s people who might have less ability to get information off the internet, or easy access to information on how to contact the agency. And people seeking SSI and disability may have serious mental impairments or be homeless.”

Had benefit awards continued at pre-pandemic levels for SSI and SSDI, 5.5 million more people would be receiving benefits for these two programs, according to Weaver’s calculation. (https://bit.ly/3CcX49v) ...

“We are concerned that the plan is vague and full of gaps,” said Rich Couture, president of the AFGE council representing hearings and appeals office personnel and spokesman for a committee made up of six AFGE bargaining councils. “It doesn’t specify what the plan will be for occupancy rates, or how we’ll make sure that waiting rooms don’t get overwhelmed.” ...

Social Security notes that it is following the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and government-wide guidelines for occupancy and physical distancing. “Our offices will use signage, seating arrangements, floor markings and Plexiglass barriers to assist with distancing and occupancy requirements,” Hinkle said. The agency also is monitoring the Nov. 22 deadline for all federal workers to be vaccinated, and is collecting vaccination information from workers. ...

Incorrect Chld Care Credit Payments Made To Attorneys

     My firm has received a child care credit payment on one of our former clients. I've asked around and three other attorneys I know have also received these payments by mistake. Who knows how many more there may be? The payments came from the IRS.

     We don't know exactly what to do other than to put the money in escrow for now.  We'd like to just pay the money to our former clients, the ones who probably should have received the money, but that may not be safe. Our experience with Social Security is that if they pay us money that should have gone to the client, they eventually bill us for the overpayment and they don't care in the least that the money has been paid over to the client. The opening letter from Social Security in these cases -- I repeat, their opening letter -- demands that we repay the money immediately accompanied by the threat to take away our right to represent claimants. I've received even more belligerent letters after reminding them that I repaid their money long before they ever billed me. Given this experience, we don't want to pay the money over to the clients but if we just send a check to the IRS, will they know how to credit it? Will the incorrect payments keep coming month after month?

     I have no idea how extensive this problem is or whether the mistake is at Social Security or the IRS but there is some degree of problem here. The IRS and Social Security need to get together and figure this out.

A Mobile Accessible Platform To Handle All Of Social Security's Transactions?

      From Federal News Network:

The Biden administration is working on an executive order focused on improving customer experience within government and building on its ongoing work to improve the equity of public-facing services. ...

The draft executive order directs agencies to link customer experience metrics to their strategic plans and priority goals. It also ties that progress into performance review requirements for members of the Senior Executive Service and senior management. ...

Individual agency actions under consideration include the State Department providing a new online passport renewal experience, the Social Security Administration creating a mobile-accessible online platform that can handle all transactions and the Transportation Security Administration implementing new tools at airport security checkpoints to reduce passenger wait times. ...

    People who think that a single mobile accessible platform will handle all of Social Security's transactions with the public greatly underestimate the complexity of the work that the Social Security Administration does. That's one of Social Security's biggest problems -- the public perception that what the agency does is simple -- just processing people onto retirement benefits. Most of what the agency does is far more complicated than that. Many of the agency's forms should be simplified but they would still be far too long to be completed on a cell phone.

Field Office Closures Have Had A Devastating Effect

     From Jonathan Stein and David Weaver writing in The Hill:

The Social Security Administration's (SSA’s) 1,200 field offices have been closed for the last 20 months, with devastating effects for disabled Americans. Pre-pandemic, more than 43 million Americans were served at SSA field offices; the people most in need of walk-in, on-demand services included people with low- or zero-incomes, housing instability, limited English proficiency, or significant physical or mental disabilities that were themselves barriers to access. With office closures, their inability to file applications and appeals and to correct bureaucratic errors has led to historically unprecedented declines in people receiving Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) or Supplemental Security Income (SSI) disability benefits.

In fiscal year (FY) 2021, SSA's awards of SSDI benefits to disabled persons and their family members were down 25 percent relative to FY 2019. SSI disability awards, granted to people without much work history, were down even more, with a 30 percent decline.

Had SSI awards continued at the pre-pandemic level, there would have been 280,000 more SSI awards over the last two fiscal years. In the pre-pandemic years of FY 2017-2019, SSDI awards were declining only modestly; had that trend continued, there would have been 270,000 more SSDI awards in the last two fiscal years. ...

The decline in awards has continued to the present period. SSDI and SSI awards for September 2021 were down 34 and 42 percent, respectively, from the figures for September 2019. ...

It is crucial that office reopening allow for walk-in service. Many current or potential SSI beneficiaries lack reliable access to internet or have limited minutes available for their phones. ...

Last, but certainly not least: It is 11 months into the current administration, and there has yet to be a nomination of a Social Security Commissioner. Many of the needed changes in policy and personnel at SSA can only be made by a Senate-confirmed commissioner, and time is running out to act before the next election. ...

OHO Stats

     The report shown below was obtained from Social Security by the National Organization of Social Security Claimants Representatives (NOSSCR) and published in its newsletter, which is not available online to non-members. It contains basic operating statistics for Social Security's Office of Hearings Operations (OHO). 

Click on image to view full size

The Rich Get Richer

      From the Michigan Retirement and Disability Research Center:

Disparities in Social Security claim ages have risen since the early 1990s. With high earners increasingly likely to delay claiming, and also living longer on average than lower earners, late claimants may differ in critical ways from early claimants. Using Social Security Administration data and focusing on men, we find that late claimants have lower mortality than those who claim at age 62, so late claimants are adversely selected. As a result of selective claiming combined with improvements in actuarial adjustments, the return to delaying claiming has become systematically positive for those who actually delay, but not for those who claim early. We further find that selective claiming increases benefits by more for those with higher lifetime earnings because their return to delay exceeds actuarially fair amounts by larger margins. Lastly, we find that selective claiming has a modest effect on total payouts, but a more consequential effect on inequality in lifetime benefit payouts. In the aggregate, the increase in Trust Fund payouts as a result of adverse selection in claiming was 0.5% for the most recent retiring cohorts. Yet, lifetime benefit payouts are 1.9% higher for those in the highest quartile of lifetime earnings as a result of claim-age differences, compared to what payouts would be if they had the same claim ages as those in the lowest quartile, and this contributes 2.8% to the difference in expected lifetime benefits between the highest and lowest quartiles.