The Treasury Department announced Tuesday morning that it has successfully implemented new safeguards to prevent government payments to dead people in an effort to reduce waste and fraud.The verification system includes screening 885 million federal payments against expanded death records, effectively auditing payments totaling nearly $2.7 trillion.It has already flagged and stopped payments totaling roughly $99 million that had been marked to be sent to dead people."Treasury has delivered on a key promise of President Trump’s mandate to stop improper payments and fraud before money leaves the Treasury, and strengthen the integrity of the federal payment system," Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in a statement.
"Together with Vice President Vance’s Task Force to Eliminate Fraud, this new safeguard addresses a longstanding vulnerability and helps ensure every dollar the federal government spends reaches its intended recipient.Treasury will continue efforts to modernize the federal payment system, strengthen safeguards against fraud and improper payments, and protect taxpayer dollars."ELON MUSK SAYS MILLIONS IN SOCIAL SECURITY DATABASE ARE BETWEEN AGES OF 100 AND 159Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has been hailed by President Donald Trump as one of the Cabinet's brights stars under his second administration.
(Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)The move tallies a victory for President Donald Trump's March 2025 Executive Order 14249, "Protecting America's Bank Account Against Fraud, Waste, and Abuse."More than 4,900 payments linked to deceased payees were returned to the federal agencies that initiated them for further review.The effort relies in part on Treasury’s expanded access to the Social Security Administration’s Full Death Master File, which contains death information used to identify potentially ineligible recipients before payments are issued.Congress initially gave Treasury temporary access to the database under a three-year pilot program authorized...