Oops. Somehow most of the networks and MS media overlooked this. Well, you know how it is. Win some, lose some. Can't win 'em all. The government was aware of it for a long time, so I'm sure they would act upon completion of an investigation and audit.
Sat Sep 24, 2011 12:12AM GMT
US Office of Personnel Management Director John Berry
The US government has paid more than $600 million in benefit payments to federal workers after their death over the past five years, according to a new report.
The benefit payments were supposed to go to the retired and the disabled, but because there is no proper supervision over who actually receives the money, in some cases family members of the beneficiaries continue receiving the payments long after the target receivers pass away, US Office of Personnel Management (OPM) Inspector General Patrick McFarland said in a report issued on Friday, USA Today reported.
A case in point in the report refers to the son of a beneficiary who received over $515,000 in 37 years. His father had died in 1971, but inspectors only found out about the case after the son's death in 2008.
Despite the government's awareness of the problem since an inspector general's report in 2005 revealed serious problems in the Civil Service Retirement and Disability Fund, the report says, an efficient system to detect which beneficiaries are dead and which are alive has not been established, despite more than a half dozen attempts.
Although Office of Personnel Management spokesman Edmund Byrnes refused to comment on the case, OPM Director John Berry said that finding a practical solution to the problem “should be of first priority.”
The OPM report says, “It is time to stop, once and for all, this waste of taxpayer money.”
The OPM has also sampled its records of all recipients over 90 years old to confirm if they are still alive. In 2009, there were more than 125,000 recipients identified as over 90 and about 3,400 over 100 years old.
In 2010, government investigators discovered that more than 89,000 stimulus payments of $250 each from the massive economic recovery package went to people who were either dead or in prison.
The United States Office of Personnel Management is an independent agency of the United States government that manages the civil service of the federal government.
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