It seems the Republican Party has made it part of its platform to criticize Social Security programs, especially Social Security disability, and make false claims that there is substantial amounts of fraud within the system costing taxpayers huge amounts of money, but where are the Republicans when Social Security beneficiaries get their benefits stolen by scammers?
It is a fact that there is less than 1 percent of fraud involved in Social Security disability, but a much larger fraud problem exists where scammers steal government funds from Social Security beneficiaries. According to Social Security’s Office of Inspector General (OIG), nearly $11 million in benefit payments were misdirected through unauthorized direct deposit changes through online transactions. This was done from 2014 to 2016 through Social Security’s My Social Security program, an online service that allows individuals to create a personal Social Security online account to access account information and to include direct deposit banking information. The nearly $11 million was stolen from roughly 7,200 different beneficiaries.
The good news is that the amount of fraud being committed in this manner seems to be reducing, as the OIG reported that the amount of benefits being misdirected has steadily decreased after the OIG made recommendations to Social Security to increase its effort to verify identities. According to the OIG, Social Security prevented more than $14 million in benefits from being misdirected, which would have impacted nearly 12,000 Social Security beneficiaries whose direct deposit bank account information was changed without their authorization.
Unfortunately, this type of identity fraud is the most common type of fraud related to Social Security payments, but you rarely here Social Security disability critics talk about stopping this type of fraud, they would rather continue to highlight less significant matters related to the Social Security disability program.
