Exclusive | Social Security Administration ripped for sending $186 million to dead people: ‘Paying actual ghosts’
WASHINGTON — The Social Security Administration has been caught sending checks to people who are no longer alive, exposing a glaring problem that critics say costs taxpayers billions of dollars and undermines trust in the system.
Sen. Joni Ernst (R‑Iowa), a Republican known for her aggressive fight against pork‑barrel programs, warned the agency that “the time for the catch‑me‑if‑you‑can Social Security fraudsters must come to an end.” In a letter to SSA Commissioner Frank Bisignano, she urged the department to use all its administrative authority to stop payments disappearing to the departed.
The agency’s shortcomings have been exposed in a series of high‑profile fraud cases. In 2023, an inspector‑general report estimated that more than $186 million was paid out over several years to people who were, in fact, deceased and whose benefits were siphoned by surviving relatives. The report highlighted 14,877 abuse allegations, noting that the SSA failed to investigate a staggering 12,050 of them in a timely manner.
Examples of this misconduct are numerous. A Canadian national, Ellis Kingsep, allegedly cashed close to $420,000 of his 103‑year‑old mother’s checks from 1995 through 2023, even keeping legal documents that could help him forge identification. In California, Donald Felix Zampach is accused of hiding his mother’s death for over thirty years, diverting more than $800,000 of benefits meant for her. And in San Diego, Josephine Guinauli Aquino pleaded guilty to concealing her father‑in‑law’s 2019 death and stealing $175,000 by forging at least 150 checks.
More recently, Afshin Setoodeh took advantage of his mother’s travel out of the country in 2019 and her subsequent death in 2022, pocketing about $55,000 of unused benefits.
Sen. Ernst’s plea comes after the Senate’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) Caucus, which she co‑chairs, has pushed for more robust data sharing to track and eliminate these improper payments. She points to the 2020 “Stopping Improper Payments to Deceased People Act,” which mandated inter‑agency cooperation, and to a 2024 watchdog report that uncovered roughly $71.8 billion of improper payments in nearly $8.6 trillion of service payouts.
“Most Americans would prefer the story remain fictitious and not have millions of their tax dollars paying actual ghosts,” she said. “We need to stop paying dead people — full stop.”
Ernst remains a strong advocate for expanding the scope of the act. She co‑sponsored bipartisan legislation that would require the Treasury Department to access the SSA’s Full Death Master File for its Do‑Not‑Pay system. When Treasury gained this access in 2023, it halted $31 million in fraudulent payments, a figure announced by the Biden administration.
The problem is not limited to Social Security. Earlier this month, the GAO found that more than $94 million in Obamacare payments went to households with a deceased person enrolled—an abuse facilitated by dead SSNs and fake identities.
While the SSA has taken steps to audit and catch fraud, experts say prevention must take precedence over punitive action. As Sen. Ernst argues, the agency must become proactive rather than reactive, identifying and closing loopholes before fraudsters can act.
The Post reached out to the SSA for comments on the latest figures and reforms, but no response has been received to date.
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