“However, her name was never entered into the SS death index.”
That’s interesting, but I don’t know how common it is. A system that services tens of millions of seniors obviously can’t be perfect, but unless this is widespread, how could Madelyn Dunham be sure this guy wouldn’t end up in SSDI, in which case the fraud would have been detected relatively quickly and her beloved grandson ended up in jail etc.?
It depends on how it was obtained. If the person was in a nursing home, and had no relatives, the administrator essentially had power of attorney over the records. If the administrator was “selling” numbers that could not be traced, she just wouldn’t report the number to SS. Or it could have been someone the local SS office on the take. A file comes across the desk that has no living relatives, it just isn’t entered into the death index. As with my case, it shows entering a name into the death index is a separate process from stopping the SS payments and paying out the death benefit. Even SS says that they do not have a death record for all persons; therefore, SSA does not guarantee the veracity of the death index file.
The 75 year old man’s last known addy was in ... wait for it ... Hawaii!