The Social Security Administration must tighten its systems to stop sending benefits to dead people, Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, warned in a letter to SSA Commissioner Frank Bisignano, calling for an end to fraud that drains taxpayers.
"The time for the catch-me-if-you-can Social Security fraudsters must come to an end," Ernst wrote Tuesday, the New York Post reported.
Ernst urged the agency to use every administrative tool available to prevent improper payments before they happen, not years later, after money is long gone.
The renewed push comes as watchdog reviews and federal prosecutions continue to highlight cases in which relatives or other bad actors allegedly concealed deaths and pocketed payments for years.
An SSA Office of Inspector General review in 2023 found at least $186 million in payments went out to payees who may not have been using funds for beneficiaries' needs, while the report also found SSA did not properly or timely investigate thousands of allegations.
Ernst cited several recent examples of alleged fraud.
Canadian national Ellis Kingsep is accused of cashing about $420,000 worth of checks for his mother from 1995 through 2023 — long after she would have been 103 — and was later caught with materials related to fake IDs and copies of her signature, according to reports.
In California, Donald Felix Zampach is accused of concealing his mother's death for more than three decades and taking more than $800,000.
And last month, Josephine Guinauli Aquino of San Diego pleaded guilty to hiding her father-in-law's 2019 death and collecting more than $175,000, including by forging at least 150 bank checks.
A more recent prosecution involved Afshin Setoodeh, who allegedly failed to report that his mother left the country in 2019 and later died in 2022, then collected roughly $55,000 in benefits, according to accounts of the case.
While estimating the full scope of improper Social Security payments is difficult, the issue has long been a magnet for scrutiny, including from the Department of Government Efficiency under then-leader Elon Musk, who claimed his team found widespread problems in the agency's records.
Even as some public claims have been disputed, watchdog findings continue to show that improper payments across government remain a significant problem.
Ernst, who leads the Senate DOGE Caucus and plans to retire at the end of her term in early 2027, argued Congress must back enforcement with stronger guardrails.
She previously helped pass the Stopping Improper Payments to Deceased People Act, which took effect in 2020 to improve cross-agency information sharing.
But she has also backed additional legislation that would expand mandatory sharing of death records with Treasury's Do Not Pay system, a step supporters say could prevent fraud before checks ever go out.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Charlie McCarthy ✉
Charlie McCarthy, a writer/editor at Newsmax, has nearly 40 years of experience covering news, sports, and politics.
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