Fatal error: Woman learns from her bank that she’s dead
Crofton resident’s new problem: gallows humor
Ellen Baron says there was nothing particularly special about Sept. 20 — until she got home and learned she was dead.
The 75-year-old Crofton resident learned the news of her untimely demise from her bank, Baron said. The balance in two bank accounts fell to zero. All of her money was frozen. “I freaked,” she said. Baron called the bank and, fearing she’d been scammed, sought help getting her money back.
But it wasn’t a scam. The Social Security Administration, she learned, had notified her bank that she was dead.
Baron said she was told by Social Security officials that a key-in error caused her accidental death designation.
Every month, the Baltimore-based federal agency accidentally declares people dead, according to the administration’s Office of the Inspector General. The agency receives about 2.8 million death reports each year; officials put the number of erroneous declarations at less than 1,000 a month nationally.
DEAD?,
DEAD?,
Of the “millions of death reports we receive each year, less than one-third of 1 percent are subsequently corrected,” said Vivian Nichols, a Social Security spokesperson, in an email. Such “fatal errors” can be difficult to fix. Baron said she spent about two weeks working with her bank and local Social Security office to prove her existence.
“I was first very relieved that I wasn’t scammed,” Baron said. “Then it was like, ‘Oh my God, I’m dead, what do I do now?’ ”
Baron called the situation upsetting, and said just when she assumed she had it resolved, another problem sprung up. For example, more than a week passed before she found out her health insurance plan was canceled.
Still, she considers herself lucky because she was able to fix the problem on her own. But she wouldn’t wish it on anyone else.
“Suppose I was immobile. What if I was out of town or out of the country?” she said.
“That’s what got me really annoyed,” Baron said. “They just took some information that was inaccurate and acted on it, couldn’t prove where they got it and caused all this inconvenience.”
While the ordeal has caused headaches for Baron, her friends and family have gotten a good laugh out of it.
“Everybody’s very amused,” she said. “People are calling me, who heard about it, and saying, ‘I heard you were dead, how are you feeling?’ ”
She said her husband, Stephen, bought a tombstone-shaped Halloween prop and put it on her pillow.
And when he accompanied his wife to the Social Security office, he quipped with workers there, saying, “I’m just here for the survivor’s benefits.” Ellen Baron of Crofton seems very much alive, despite finding she had been declared dead by the Social Security Administration.