Around 1,500 federal employees may have improperly received Social Security benefits, according to a new report from a government watchdog obtained by ABC News.
One beneficiary was a Transportation Security Administration screener who worked in California. In 1995, she was approved for disability payments for mood and anxiety disorders. Fast-forward eight years to when she began full-time employment as a screener, but failed to report the disqualifying change in employment status to Social Security. According to the report, SSA requested a Work Activity Report in 2005 and got no response, but continued to make payments. She continued receiving payments to the tune of $108,000 over 19 years and currently lives in a house that is listed for sale at about $1.8 million.
In another case, a postal worker who receives $23,000 in disability benefits for mood disorders is shown carrying her heavy mail bag and unloading it onto a table. This particular worker was awarded Disability Insurance beginning in 2006 for a brain tumor. Although she returned to work in 2007, she did not report her change in employment status to SSA. When the agency investigated and discovered the beneficiary had in fact been dishonest about her working status, she was informed she would be required to pay back $19,000 in benefits. She agreed to pay $100 a month. She admitted she will probably be dead before she pays back all she owes.
In all, the 1,500 federal employees cited in the report received approximately $1.7 million a month in payments -- 1,097 of them from the Disability Insurance program, 306 from the Supplemental Security Income program, and the remaining 87 from a combination of the two.
In 2008, the Disability Insurance program paid out around $104 billion in financial benefits to some 9 million beneficiaries, with the Supplemental Security Income program giving $38 billion to about 7.5 million recipients.
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