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When financial advisers discuss Social Security benefits, it is usually in the context of counseling clients when to claim retirement benefits and the impact of that decision on the amount of survivor benefits for the remaining spouse. But one of the Social Security program's most valuable features is disability benefits that are paid to workers and their dependent family members when they are too sick or injured to work. Yet many advisers are at a loss when it comes to guiding a client through the disability application labyrinth. That's when it's time to call in the pros. One adviser contacted...

Federal agents spent months tracking down Conn, who cut off his electronic monitor and fled in June. Conn pleaded guilty in March to stealing from the federal government and bribing a judge in a more than $500 million Social Security fraud case.

A prominent Kentucky disability attorney at the center of a more than $500 million Social Security fraud case, who became the subject of a massive manhunt after he vanished months ago, has been captured in Honduras, officials announced Monday. Eric Conn was captured by a SWAT team as he came out of a restaurant in the coastal city of La Ceiba, the Honduras public magistrate’s office said in a news release . The office added that the arrest was “the product of arduous intelligence, surveillance and tailing by the agents.” U.S. federal agents spent months tracking Conn, who cut off...

Florida Senator Marco Rubio admits that the Republican tax cut plan to aid corporations and the wealthy will require cuts to Social Security and Medicare to pay for it. Rubio told reporters this week that in order to address the federal deficit, which will grow by at least $1 trillion if the tax plan passes, Congress will need to cut entitlement programs such as Social Security. Advocates for the elderly and the poor have warned that entitlement programs would be on the chopping block, but this is the first time a prominent Republican has backed their claims. “We have to...

Many Americans rely on Social Security benefits to see them through retirement, but how much should they really be depending on those checks? Not very much, experts said. Social Security is not being used as it was intended, said Ric Edelman, executive chairman and co-founder of Edelman Financial Services in Fairfax, Va. and author of “The Truth about Your Future.” When Congress and President Franklin D. Roosevelt created the system in 1933, the program was designed to be a safety net for Americans — for those who had no financial support. Now, “a great many Americans are relying heavily on...

One possibility is using cryptographic keys, or a combination of long random numbers WASHINGTON—The administration of President Donald Trump is exploring ways to replace the Social Security number with a safer system based on modern technology in the wake of the Equifax Inc. EFX -0.58% hack, the White House cybersecurity czar said Tuesday. Rob Joyce, the White House’s cybersecurity coordinator, said one possibility is using cryptographic keys, or a combination of long random numbers, to unlock personal data. The merit of such numbers is that they could be revoked once they are found to be compromised, he said. “I feel...

The psychologist who helped pull off the biggest Social Security fraud in U.S. history was sentenced Friday to 25 years in prison. Alfred Bradley Adkins was part of the fraud ring orchestrated by Eric C. Conn, one of the country’s most prominent disability lawyers, and David B. Daugherty, a Social Security judge who rubber-stamped at least 1,700 bogus applications for benefits. All told, the scam would have cost the government at least $600 million in fraudulent lifetime benefits, according to the government’s conservative estimate. Some $93 million were already paid out before the scam was stopped, the government said. Judge...

The Social Security Administration improperly paid children in juvenile detention facilities $1.7 million, according to a new audit. The inspector general for the agency found that just four states accounted for the improper disability payments. The estimate for fraudulent payments was "conservative" since the audit did not compile all data from the four states reviewed...*snip SEE POST #1* "While SSA had established overpayments for 274 of these juveniles, we identified 273 instances where SSA was unaware of all or part of the confinement period. We determined that 158 of these juveniles were confined for 6 months or longer without SSA's...

The Social Security Administration made $37 million worth of benefit payments to dead veterans, according to a new audit.The inspector general for the agency reported more retirement and disability payments could be made to deceased individuals if action is not taken to correct the government's death record system.

Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,The point is the present system cannot endure.Despite all the happy talk about "recovery" and higher growth, wages have gone nowhere since 2000--and for the bottom 20% of workers, they've gone nowhere since the 1970s.Gross domestic product (GDP) has risen smartly since 2000, but the share of GDP going to wages and salaries has plummeted: this is simply an extension of a 47-year downtrend.Last month I posted one reason Why We're Doomed: Our Economy's Toxic Inequality (August 16, 2017). The second half of why we're doomed is stagnant wages. Why do stagnating...

The Social Security judge who rubber-stamped more than 1,700 bogus disability applications as part of the largest disability fraud ring in American history was sentenced to four years in federal prison Friday. David B. Daugherty left the Kentucky courtroom in handcuffs after Judge Danny C. Reeves rejected the government’s recommendation of a year in home confinement, and instead gave him the maximum time allowed on the charges he pled guilty to. The judge also ordered Daugherty to pay $93 million in restitution to the government, according to witnesses in the courtroom. Daugherty was part of the disability fraud ring orchestrated...

There’s nothing so classy as a policy wonk reveling in vindication. And I’m nothing if not classy. But there’s a bigger purpose to be served. What I – and more importantly, my co-author Syl Scheiber – were vindicated about is a 2014 Wall Street Journal op-ed arguing that perceptions of a “retirement crisis” are in part driven by bad data. Specifically, the Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey (CPS) is very poor at measuring the incomes that Americans derive from private retirement plans, including IRAs, 401(k)s and lump sum distributions from traditional pensions. As a result, retirees look poorer and more...

It is no secret that what the major media seem to care most about is radically different from what concerns average Americans. While the inside the Beltway crowd continues to focus on alleged collusion between President Trump and Russia, real concerns like the future of Social Security are ignored.The Social Security Board of Trustees, a six-member panel who serve the federal government by offering a short-term and long-range forecast on the health of the Social Security program, has issued a new report, which says that while the retirement program will be "cash flow positive" through 2021, it is still in...

House Republicans greeted current and future federal employees with two controversial body blows in recent days — one amounts to a pay cut and the other would allow new feds to be fired for “no cause at all.” The House Budget Committee approved a spending plan that would save the government $163.5 billion over 10 years by taking that amount from federal employees. (snip) Republicans call their plan “Building a Better America.” But the Americans now working to build a better country through their federal jobs would be called on to sacrifice again, as they have repeatedly over the years....

The government is out today with its annual update of Social Security’s sick finances: --The system is $12.5 trillion under water, up from $11.4 trillion a year ago. --Absent law changes, checks to retirees will have to be chopped 23% beginning in 2035. --To fix just the retirement pay program, Congress could kick up the payroll tax by 2.8 percentage points. Fixing Medicare’s disastrous finances would be in addition. --The retirement operation is running an $86 billion annual deficit. That’s the difference between the money coming in from Social Security’s share of payroll taxes (12.4% of covered payroll) and the...

Social Security's unfunded liabilities total $12.5 trillion in present-dollar terms over a 75-year timeframe, the administration's trustees reported Thursday, an increase of $1.2 trillion from last year's estimate. The trustees report showed that Social Security's combined trust fund can only pay scheduled benefits through 2034, a projected date that is unchanged from a year ago. Medicare's trust fund, though, is in better shape than previously estimated and will run out a year later than previously anticipated, in 2029. At those dates, beneficiaries would face the prospect of an immediate cut in benefits unless policy were changed in some way to...

Archimedes, one of the greatest mathematicians and scientists of all time understood the importance of the design of a system. Commenting on the incredible power of levers he noted, “Give me a place to stand on, and I will move the Earth.” With a properly designed system almost anything is possible; with a poor one, almost nothing.

My 97 year olf mother passed on recently. I am going through many old photos etc. I have blocked out name and number of my father who was a WWII Vet. Has anyone seen this gov't issue copper social security card before?

Authorities in Florida say a man hid his wife's body in a freezer so he could continue collecting her Social Security benefits. The U.S. Attorney’s Office says, Margaret Dunn died at her home in Sun City Center, Fla. in 2002 and Allan Dunn placed her body in the freezer. He then collected her Social Security benefits until he died in 2010. In all, he improperly collected $92,088 in federal Social Security benefits. According to authorities, upon his death, Mr. Dunn’s sole asset of value was the condominium unit where he and his wife had resided. His heirs, who were unaware...

Back before the Industrial Revolution most people were rural, and they lived off the land. Families took care of their aging families. Parents had big farm houses that encompassed not only Mom, Dad, and children, but Grandma and Grandpa were a part of the mix…possibly even Aunt Hilda if she needed a roof over her head. The whole family worked together to make the living. Even little Johnny had his chore of feeding the chickens. His little sister gathered the eggs, and Mama fixed them for breakfast. Meanwhile, Daddy had already gotten up at the crack of dawn to build...