Stimulus Money Sent to the Jailed and the Dead
(p. A8) The Social Security Administration sent about 89,000 stimulus payments of $250 each to dead and incarcerated people--but almost half of them were returned, a new inspector-general's report found.
. . .
. . . 17,000 payments went to recipients who were in prison at the time the payment was made in May 2009. However, not all of those payments were necessarily against the letter of the law. While lawmakers intended to prevent payments to people in prison, the law included only a provision prohibiting payments to people incarcerated in the three months before the plan was passed--from November 2008 through January 2009.
. . .
. . . : The SSA says that the stimulus package didn't include a provision allowing it to try to retrieve funds that were mistakenly sent out, so it can't try to retrieve the rest of the money. Money transferred electronically may be sitting untouched in bank accounts of dead people.The combined total of the mistaken payments is $22.3 million. About $12 million hasn't been returned.
For the full story, see:
LOUISE RADNOFSKY. "Stimulus Checks Sent to Dead, Incarcerated." The Wall Street Journal (Fri., OCTOBER 8, 2010): A8.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the article was dated OCTOBER 7, 2010.)
