The Wilmington, Delaware, treasurer’s office has been paying spousal pension benefits to a woman more than 20 years after her death, a recent audit revealed.
According to a city audit, the Wilmington treasurer paid spousal benefits—a total of nearly $73,000—to an unnamed woman from 1974 until this year, when the office learned that she had died in 1997. According to Delaware Online, Social Security records did not document her death two decades prior, leading to an additional $72,966.60 in postmortem payments.
To cross-check Social Security and death records with pensioner information, the city was using third-party vendor Comserv on a semi-annual basis for roughly 20 years until they recently went out of business. Wilmington has since been using another contractor that allows the treasurer’s office to check Social Security information more frequently.
There are several ways the treasurer’s office can learn of a benefits recipient’s death. The office regularly checks newspapers for death notices, families will call the city to inform them of a person’s passing, or mail is returned.
“They usually have some way of knowing, but they never got returned mail for this person. There was no indication that the person was dead,” acting City Auditor Tamara Thompson told Delaware Online. “This happened to be an anomaly. If it’s not reported, then it’s nearly impossible to detect.”
Whether the city will get the payments back is the hands of the law department, according to City Treasurer Velda Jones-Potter. The city did not indicate whether is currently pursuing or planning to pursue a criminal investigation into the matter.