street roots
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April 25, 2014
S
John M unro’s lim ited income was legally administered through his representative payee. The company representing h im closed its doors in A pril w ith only three weeks’ notice to customers such as
In those we trust
Gaps in oversight leave clients vulnerable in nation's multi-billion-dollar payee system
BY JAKE THOMAS
STAFF W R IT E R
t could have happened in any town in
any state.
I
The checks were supposed to be
deposited and used to pay for rent, utilities,
food and other necessities for a disabled
individual. The official report found
-otherwise.
In 2012, an investigator from Columbia
County was sent to check out Tara
Anderson, who was managing the disability
benefits for someone who couldn’t handle
their own money because of their*
impairment. Anderson claimed she never
used the money for her own benefit, but the
investigation found that she had spent the
money on rental cars, fake cigarettes, a trip
to the bowling alley, online purchases and
others. According to the report Anderson
“financially exploited” the person She was
supposed to be helping.
Anderson was; a representative payee,
someone who is assigned by the Social
Security Administration« to administer the
disability benefits for sonieone who has
been deemed incapable of managing their
own finances. The person she was said to
have exploited is referred to in the report as
“AV,” alleged victim. And there are many
more AV’s but there.
The allegations of financial exploitation
brought against Anderson represent just a
small sliver of the problems within a
massive, and growing program. In fiscal year
2012, there were about 5.0 million
representative payees who managed $72
billion annually for 8.4 million beneficiaries.
John Munro, a Street Roots vendor, is.
one of those beneficiaries. He, along with
about 1,000 clients of SafetyNet of Oregon,
recently had to scramble to find a new
payee after the company closed under the
weight of afederal investigation. He worries
about what has become of his monthly
support, an inheritance trusted to a now
shuttered-company.
The representative payee program has
long suffered from a lack of oversight,'
allowing countless numbers of some of the
country’s most disabled people to become
targets for financial exploitation or worse.
As the country’s population ages, new
strains will be placed on the program as its
struggles to find payees. Oregon recently
got a taste of some of those problems when
it saw it largest payee shut its doors,
throwing some of its most vulnerable people
into turmoil.
“In summary, we found that SSA
struggles to effectively administer its
Representative Payee Program, despite
steps the agency has taken to address its
challenges in identifying, selecting, and
monitoring representative payees,” Daniel
Bertoni, a director at the Government
Accountability Office, told a congressional
panel last year. For fiscal year 2013; the
Social Security Administration referred
7,600 cases of possible malfeasance by
payees to the Office of the Inspector
General, of which 136 have been sentenced.
However, Bertoni told the panel that there’s
no way to, know how prevalent payee fraud
is because there is no adequate mechanism
to sniff it out.
The Social Security Administration and
Congress have long known that there are
problems with the representative payee
program. For more than a decade, a steady .
stream of reports have trickled out of the
Government Accountability Office and the g
Office of the Inspector General, two federal'
oversight agencies, detailing the
shortcomings of the program.
One report found that the Social Security
Administration had trouble getting payees
who misused funds to pay them back, and
some individuals who misused funds were
still serving as payees. Another report found
that the administration has had trouble
getting payees to respond to requests for
documentation of how the benefit money
was spent. Another report found that the
Social Security Administrationhas had
trouble with preventing incarcerated people
and fugitive felons from serving as payees.
Felons are allowed to’ serve as payees, as
long as they haven’t been convicted of
certain Crimes, such as human trafficking,
fraud, kidnapping and abuse. However, a
2010 report from the Office of the Inspector
General found that payee applicants don’t
always note past
convictions.
A big part of the
Westoa had previously been
problem is the Social
convicted of hilling her
Security
slsterrs boyfriend Io the
Administration has
19B0sr hot was still
limited tools to make
sure payees are not
approved to he a
abusing the people
they’re supposed to be
helping. Individual payees are required to
turn in accounting forms describing how the
benefit money was spent to cover the basic
needs of the recipient. A 2007 study by the
National Research Council called the .
monitoring process an “empty threat” that
could be thwarted by a crooked payee who
fills out tiie accounting forms with plausible
yet false information.
Although the administration has recently
taken steps to better identify and scrutinize
See TRUST, page 5