OIG, Social Security Administration, Benefit Payments in Instances Where the Social Security Administration Removed a Death Entry from the Beneficiary’s Record, A-06-07-27156, 06/19/08: “The DMF [Death Master File] is a publicly available database maintained by SSA that contains detailed information on more than 82 million deceased numberholders. Each year, SSA receives death reports for more than 2.5 million individuals and adds the information to the DMF. As depicted on the chart below, SSA receives most death reports from funeral homes or friends/relatives of the deceased. SSA considers such first party death reports to be verified and immediately posts them to the DMF.

Other sources of death reports include States and other Federal agencies, as well as postal authorities and financial institutions. SSA posts nonbeneficiary information to the DMF without verification. However, if these reports indicate an SSA beneficiary died, SSA may perform additional verification before terminating benefits or posting the death entry to the DMF. Verification of death means that an acceptable reporter (usually someone in the person’s home, a representative payee, a doctor, or hospital) agrees that the person is deceased and corroborates the date of death, if necessary.

The accuracy of death data is a highly sensitive matter for SSA. Erroneous death entries can lead to benefit termination and result in severe financial hardship and distress to the beneficiary/recipient. Conversely, the removal of legitimate death entries could allow for the authorization and payment of fraudulent benefits.

In instances when death reports are posted in error, SSA deletes the death entry from the DMF (“resurrect” the record) and, when applicable, reinstates benefit payments. SSA employees may only process transactions to resurrect a record when presented with proof the original death entry was posted in error. Unless the mistake resulted from an administrative error, the resurrection transaction should not be processed before completion of a face-to-face interview with the beneficiary or recipient. To validate the integrity of these transactions, SSA requires that two employees be involved in the process. SSA also requires that employees document the events leading to and facts supporting the transaction.

Since January 2004, SSA has provided us with electronic files containing updates made to the DMF, including instances when individual records were removed from the DMF. Preliminary analysis of these files indicated that, from January 2004 through April 2007, SSA deleted more than 44,000 individuals’ death entries from the DMF. SSA records indicated 20,623 of these individuals were in current payment status on or after April 27, 2007 and received approximately $17.2 million in monthly SSA benefit payments.”