quote:

Originally posted by MoreCowbell:
Sadly I just had a death in my family and while speaking to the funeral home they told me that they electronically notify social security about the deceased. I would definitely notify ss about what the aunt was doing.

This was my experience. SSA "knew" within days of my Mother's passing and even took back (out of her checking account) the payment they gave her the month she died. I don't know how the death in this case was handled (was it not reported? No funeral home?) but based on what happened to me I'm somewhat surprised the SSA is still sending payments to a person who has been dead for 4 years.

quote:

Originally posted by ElToro:
The title to bank account and POA will be significant. If granny came in and signed the POA with aunt at the bank itself and you can prove she was not capable of granting that, you may have a case against the bank. If they acted improperly or didn’t recognize potential elder abuse they could be in a shit storm. I have to go through quarterly trainings on how to recognize it if and to report it up the chain.

The Safe deposit money is gone I’m afraid unless they let her improperly access it but god luck ever proving there was money in there.

Your Family needs to make a decision to go scorched earth and write off this person forever or not.

A good auditor doing a "receipts and disbursements" test on the Aunts assets, liabilities, reported income and expenses can ferret out the amount for which she can't account. That will be the money that "came out off thin air/or was stolen".

Wow. Others have left the OIG link. If you haven't yet, report it TODAY. The US attorney is likely to take the case and prosecute. I hope they do. It will be an easy conviction, and deservedly so. People that do this are SCUM low life pieces of shit. Was involved in assisting with the prosecution of a few of thee cases before I retired. Hope the US Attorney prosecutes rather than being satisfied with a simple restitution.

[/QUOTE]

This was my experience. SSA "knew" within days of my Mother's passing and even took back (out of her checking account) the payment they gave her the month she died. I don't know how the death in this case was handled (was it not reported? No funeral home?) but based on what happened to me I'm somewhat surprised the SSA is still sending payments to a person who has been dead for 4 years.[/QUOTE]

SSA gets death reports from a variety of sources. Phone calls from surviving relatives, hospital reports to Medicare (when hospitals submit a claim to Medicare, there is a block to report that the patient is deceased), data from the VA, data from state vital statistics and several other sources. All of this is needed to insure timely termination of benefits. (It also explains why there are occasionally erroneous death terminations. I have never seen a case where an erroneous death termination happened because an SSA employee input the wrong SSN. When an SSA employee inputs a death the name has to match, SSN etc. All erroneous death cases that I saw were caused by bad data from other sources.)

Despite all these sources of death reports, some deaths do fall through the cracks and never get reported. That's what happened here.

quote:

Money does strange things to people especially relatives.

I'll go further:

Money does strange things to some Women.

Update in OP.

Prison and restitution. Unfortunately I foresee any money that the aunt has(previously belonging to the mother) being seized to pay back the years of SS fraud. The .gov always gets theirs.

quote:

Originally posted by Skull Leader:
Prison and restitution. Unfortunately I foresee any money that the aunt has(previously belonging to the mother) being seized to pay back the years of SS fraud. The .gov always gets theirs.

There is no money but a few hundred dollars left. She blew it all on furnishing her home, probably down payment for home and getting work done on the house.

Read the OP update.
I'll give the standard advice here as someone who is not an attorney.
Have your M-I-L pay an attorney for an hour of their time to explain the situation just to have a better idea of what to say or not to say.
My amateur opinion is that she might be a cooperating witness at some point if she actually didn't take any of the money out herself or receive any benefit but I wouldn't want to bet any money or put myself in any legal jeopardy without the advice from a professional. Also do not have any conversation with the aunt until she talks to the attorney.
Other than that, she would want to be a good listener and not volunteer anything at this meeting.

Edmond - it will be interesting to hear the outcome of the meeting.

In my experience, it will be difficult to prove a loss from the safety deposit box unless she deposited the funds into another account at that time. Difficult case as any cash will be hard to trace.
My experience with these types of federal prosecutions - very rarely is prison term applied (in my District) but the government will chase the person for restitution.

Well if she's a voting democrat I'm sure all will be forgiven.

quote:

Originally posted by kramden:
Well if she's a voting democrat I'm sure all will be forgiven.

Did you really need to inject politics into this discussion? What's the point?

quote:

Originally posted by Edmond:
I hope she sees prison.

This.

Plus, I hope your wife's mother sees some restitution from her mother's estate. Hopefully the witch-aunt has seizable assets.

RE: empty safe deposit boxes. I seem to recall back in the misty days of yore, that some types of bank accounts came with 'free perpetual' boxes. It seems reasonable that some of those would have never been used, or just enabled to get the key issued, just in case, and then forgotten about. Of course, some empty boxes - probably most - had stuff in at one time and then got cleaned out, but I do think there are also legitimate cases of some always having been empty.

quote:

Originally posted by Edmond:
The aunt Banks at the same bank and deposited the money into her account.

This should make the 'paper trail' very easy for the Feds to follow.

I'm with you, I hope that bitch sees prison and has her estate seized.

quote:

Originally posted by kramden:
Well if she's a voting democrat I'm sure all will be forgiven.

Cut it out.

This makes twice in the last week that you've interjected politics into apolitical threads.

https://sigforum.com/eve/forums...540040074#8540040074

This is entirely unwelcome in this forum.

I don't understand why SS would take the payment back for the month that you died but it seems to be common practice . In my case , I became eligible in February but did not receive my first payment till mid April .

quote:

Originally posted by selogic:
I don't understand why SS would take the payment back for the month that you died but it seems to be common practice .

Probably easier for SS to do that than try to prorate it by when in the month the death occurred. After all, the recently deceased is unlikely to complain!

^^^NO it's NOT prorated, and in the case of direct-deposit SS benefits, YES they do take back the last payment....The SSA process here makes absolutely NO sense whatsoever, but that's what they do!

SS is paid in arrears, and you are eligible for SS benefits through the last whole month of life. So what does the SSA do....They 'claw back' the last payment, for which the deceased was almost certainly entitled (or payments in the unlikely event they do not get timely notification of the death), and then through a highly inefficient process, determine the next of kin. Ultimately SSA distributes that last eligible payment to the survivors/next of kin, which is processed at 'glacial speed'....In the case of my Father's Estate it took over a year! Ten months later we received a 1099, and those dollars were taxed a SECOND Time by the .gov!!

quote:

Originally posted by selogic:
I don't understand why SS would take the payment back for the month that you died but it seems to be common practice . In my case , I became eligible in February but did not receive my first payment till mid April .

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(QUOTE) NO it's NOT prorated, and in the case of direct-deposit SS benefits, YES they do take back the last payment....The SSA process here makes absolutely NO sense whatsoever, but that's what they do.(QUOTE)
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It's not a "common practice." It's the law. It's been that way since 1937. And forgive the repetition, but it's also not an "SSA process," it's the law. As far as making sense, since when is it a requirement that the law make sense? Save any anger for those that wrote the law.

But to explain, checks that come in the current month are for the preceding month. For example, a check that you received on May 15 is for the month of April. The law states that to be eligible for a payment, you have to be survive the entire month. So if a death occurs on May 10th, since the beneficiary was alive for the entire month of April, the survivors would be entitled to the May 15 check. As far as determining the next of kin, it's a matter of law. There's not much "process" to it.

As far as the paying the underpayment to the survivors, it's not automatic. The survivors have to apply. My experience was that once the survivors applied, it usually took about two months. Those underpayments all have to be processed manually without much automation, so they take longer than a typical say, a retirement application. Since your experience was that it took longer, that's unfortunate. You won't hear any excuses from me for SSA. I will say that sometimes survivors don't submit required documents (proof of relationship) so that can delay things.