TAMPA, Fla. — Dead people are getting stimulus checks from the United States government.
The U.S. Treasury Department said more than 80 million Americans would have their stimulus checks automatically deposited into their bank accounts by Wednesday. It did not indicate some of those Americans had already passed away.
As Bloomberg explains, spouses or parents of the deceased were surprised when bank accounts began filling with cash intended for relatives who were no longer around. The publication says it's because the Internal Revenue Service is relying on some data that's as old as 2018 to make payments.
“This stimulus program is ripe for waste, fraud and abuse and this dead person receiving a check is just the tip of the iceberg,” Kentucky Republican Rep. Thomas Massie told Bloomberg.
As the news outlet points out, Massie was among the only lawmakers to oppose the $2.2 trillion bill to help Americans whose lives have been upended by the coronavirus pandemic. A spokesperson for the Senate Finance Committee told Bloomberg the matter was being reviewed.
It's unclear precisely how many deceased people have received the checks so far.
This wouldn't be the first time stimulus checks were cut to dead people.
In 2009, The Social Security Administration sent roughly 89,000 stimulus payments to people who were either dead or incarcerated, according to The Atlantic.
Nearly half the 2009 payments were ultimately returned. Asked by Bloomberg if these 2020 payments will have to be returned, the IRS declined to say.
The Wall Street Journal wrote about the 2009 mix-ups on the heels of an inspector general report in 2010. The newspaper explained it's illegal to spend Social Security money issued to someone else, but it's rarely prosecuted, especially when the amount of money in question is relatively small. In 2009, the checks were only $250 a piece. At the time, the paper pointed to only one example where somebody had been prosecuted for cashing a stimulus check that wasn't theirs.
As McClatchy explains, there's actually a death master file that the federal government has access to, which could theoretically prevent things like this from happening.
On Wednesday, major banks had outages with their online and mobile platforms, as millions of customers tried to log into their bank accounts to check on stimulus deposits.
The IRS has released an online stimulus check tracker that allows taxpayers to check on the status of their payment, confirm how they want to be paid (direct deposit or check) and enter their bank account information. For those who did not file taxes for various reasons, there is also a non-filers web portal to provide information to receive payments.
The government began issuing the one-time payments this week. Most adults who earned up to $75,000 will see a $1,200 payout, while married couples who made up to $150,000 can expect to get $2,400. Parents will get payments of $500 per child.
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