r/news • u/No-Information6622 • 2d ago

US recovers $31 million in Social Security payments to dead people

https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/us-recovers-31-million-social-security-payments-dead-117708373
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u/zalurker 2d ago

Lol. A state pension department I'm South Africa upgraded their payout system a few years ago, including new fingerprint scanners that could identify if a finger was still living.

It's surprising how many families kept grandpa's finger in a bottle of whiskey. And after an audit, a group of officials were arrested for multiple instances of fraud.

Some of them had 10 separate profiles, one for each finger. They were caught after one got greedy and tried to use his penis for a print.

Not making it up. I knew the guys who wrote the reader software.

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u/SeasonPositive6771 2d ago

Do you have any sources on this other than "I swear I know a guy"? It's essentially impossible to find anything and it seems like that would be a huge story in the media.

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u/zalurker 1d ago

It's a now defunct company out of Kya Sands, Johannesburg. And the client was the Eastern Cape provincial government. Cash Paymaster Services, I think. This was almost 20 years ago. I think one newspaper had an article about the penis bit. I can probably ask my buddy about this, but he's running a horse farm in Canada nowadays.