The Social Security Administration is getting serious about cracking down on fraud within Social Security disability programs.
Late last month Carolyn Colvin, the agency’s acting commissioner, announced that Social Security would establish a centralized fraud prevention unit in New York City. This new unit will identify potential fraud trends within Social Security disability programs. It was also announced that experienced disability examiners who were responsible for re-reviewing disability medical decisions related to recent fraud indictments in New York City and Puerto Rico, will be assigned to the new fraud unit.
The new unit’s job is to work with Social Security systems personnel to build data that will detect and hopefully prevent fraud at its earliest point.
“Social Security strives to preserve the public’s trust in our programs and we have no tolerance for fraud. We are aggressive in our efforts to detect and prevent fraud,” Colvin said. “The employees in our ant-fraud unit will be our national experts, and we plan to compile data from their work to help us develop further analytical tools to find potential fraud.”
The new unit will consist of 20 disability examiners that will be housed in a federal building in Jamaica, New York. As this new unit develops its system of detecting fraud, it will attempt to identify potential fraud before Social Security makes a favorable decision and authorizes payments.
Despite the fact that Social Security has authorized this new until to detect Social Security disability cheats, fraud remains a relatively low occurrence within the Social Security disability process, even according to Colvin as she noted that the current fraud incident rate remains at less than one percent of all cases according to Social Security’s own number.
For more information about Social Security’s new unit to identify fraud trends within the disability programs click here.
