I want my money back

Any eons know of a class action against Social Security.

Here’s an article from 2019 another way Social Security was scamming the public out of money.

Can You Sue Social Security for Swindling You Out of Lifetime Benefits?

After talking with one of out nation’s top attorneys, who recently filed a class action suit against Social Security, it appears to be both legal and practicable to pursue class action suits against the Social Security Administration if it has scammed a class of beneficiaries out of their full, rightful, and hard-earned lifetime benefits.

I’ve written about three such scams here. Today, I’ll tell you about a fourth Social Security scam. Actually, I’ll have Social Security whistle blower, John McAdams, a Social Security benefit claims authorizers tell you about this scam. Here’s his email from a couple days back.

Hi Larry,

While still waiting for the 13,564 beneficiaries to receive the approximately $141.7 million owed to them (based on Social Security’s own Office of the Inspector General Report), I’ve come across another class of widows that we’ve cheated. Here’s the scenario:

A 60 year old woman walks into a field office in Puerto Rico to apply for survivor benefits. A Claims Representative takes the application but informs the woman that because of Government Pension Offset from her Puerto Rico pension, she is not actually eligible for any cash benefits. But some state pensions do not typically go up very much or very often (or ever) regardless of how high inflation gets. If we had told the woman not to apply until a later date, she would have been eligible for payments.

I brought the issue to my management. They sent it up the chain and received the following response:

“She would be out of luck unless she was somehow misinformed. I do not think there is a policy or some kind of duty to compel SSA employees to give this kind of advice to claimants….I am sure that it often does not occur to the claims taker that benefits may be available with a later filing and Month of Entitlement.”

She was quite obviously misinformed! By taking the application now, the claimant got nothing. If we had told her to check again in the future, she would have gotten cash benefits. There was absolutely no reason to take the application at the current time.

So the claimant is “out of luck” because “it does not occur to the claims taker” to understand the basics of month of entitlement? This is another entire class of cheated widows we need to identify and make right.

Sincerely,

John

My guess is there is upwards of a quarter billion dollars that Social Security has scammed from the public. Let me list the four scams about which I’ve written about in prior columns and above and add a couple more.

Calling people when they are 69 and offering them a bribe to take their Social Security benefits early without informing them that they will suffer permanently reduced monthly benefits as a result

https://www.forbes.com/sites/kotlikoff/2019/05/28/can-you-sue-social-security-for-swindling-you-out-of-lifetime-benefits/