If one dies in any kind of facility, under a doctor’s care, using an undertaker, or otherwise being tended to, then a notification is sent and the SS bennies stop immediately. There are few ways to keep SS from finding out about the death. Dying, and getting buried, in a rural setting when no outside people are involved is one. Dying overseas might sometimes work.
What can get awkward is that you have to live for the next whole months to collect the benefit. They will take back that last payment you got in the month you died. The whole payment system is maybe the simplest, cleanest, the gummint has?
most survivors will contact SS of the death in order to get the death benefit..
This is only one case that I have personal knowledge of, so I cannot say how widespread this sort of fraud is.
Elderly woman died at home, was buried through a funeral establishment. A relative who had moved into her home many years prior and who was sponging from her wound up running her accounts when the woman declined cognitively.
Following this lady’s death, the relative continued to access her bank account, which was still receiving the SS direct deposit, for some time after her death.
The SS Administration was eventually notified of the fraud, so I would hope that the deposits stopped, but who knows?