Lack of coordination between federal agencies.
Via CNS News
The U.S. government not only failed to prosecute an illegal alien who stole the identity of his dead baby son—who had collected SSI before he died—but granted the father legal status to work in the United States.
This one-time illegal alien, the Office of Inspector General for the Social Security Administration believes, fraudulently used his son’s Social Security Number for at least three years.
Yet, he was not prosecuted, according to the IG’s office, because his case did not meet the prosecutorial guidelines of the U.S. attorney for New Jersey.
In fact, this case might never have come to light had the IG not launched an audit aimed at uncovering the misuse of children’s Social Security Numbers.
The IG’s office issued its report on this audit–which covered tax years 2007, 2008, 2009 and 2010–this March.
One of its findings was that there were 365 dead children whose SSNs reportedly earned wages during the four years audited. “In three cases,” the IG determined, “the earnings were legitimate and earned by child actors who had died.”
But in the other 362 cases, people had misused the SSNs of dead children.
On their face, Social Security records indicated that these 362 dead children had worked for 626 different employers over the four-year period covered by the audit and earned a collective $9 million.
“Of the 362 deceased children, 326 were under age 7 when the wages were earned,” said the report. “In fact, 24 of the children had died at birth.”
In many cases, a parent or a relative stole the dead child’s SSN.
“In 59 of these cases, it is likely the deceased child’s parent used the child’s identity for employment,” said the report. “For these cases, we found that the reported names on the W-2s matched the parent’s names on the child’s Numident. For example, a child who was 2-years-old when he died in January 2000 had over $119,000 in wages reported for TYs 2007 through 2009 by a construction company.”