Fact Check: Social Security falsely declared 82-year-old man dead, stopped benefits
Claim:
In early 2025, an 82-year-old man named Ned Johnson in Seattle was declared "dead" by the U.S. Social Security and deprived of his benefits.
Rating:
In March 2025, in the first weeks after U.S. President Donald Trump instituted the new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and appointed tech magnate Elon Musk as its figurehead, a rumor began to spread that an 82-year-old man had lost his Social Security benefits after DOGE mistakenly declared him dead.
For example, a post on X said DOGE had "stolen" the man's Social Security payments and canceled his Medicare health insurance (archived):
As of this writing, the post had gained nearly one million views and 33,000 likes. The same claim appeared several times on X, but also on Reddit. Further, The Express Tribune, an English-speaking newspaper in Pakistan, published an article relaying the story, as did Common Dreams, a nonprofit, left-leaning news outlet in the U.S. Several Snopes readers emailed asking for confirmation that the claim is true.
Snopes contacted the Johnsons via telephone and was able to confirm the details of the story with them. We have therefore deemed the claim true (though we have seen no evidence definitively linking DOGE to the error).
The rumor stemmed from an article by The Seattle Times, published on March 15, 2025 (archived). In the story, writer Danny Westneat said he identified a man named Leonard "Ned" Johnson who had been affected by being falsely reported as dead, in what he suggested was a consequence of DOGE's meddling with the Social Security Administration (SSA), an independent government agency. (Snopes has seen no evidence definitively linking DOGE to the erroneous classification of Johnson as deceased.)
We have reached out to the Social Security Administration, DOGE and Musk ask them to confirm details of the story and we will update this report should they respond.
According to Westneat, Johnson's wife Pam received a letter from the bank offering condolences on her husband's death. The letter went on to explain that the bank had deducted the equivalent of two months of Social Security payments from Johnson's account to return them to the benefits to the agency — $5,201 for December 2024 and January 2025. According to the bank, Westneat reported, Johnson had died in November 2024.
However, Johnson was very much alive. But because of this false report, Westneat said the 82-year-old Seattleite had not received his February or March 2025 Social Security deposits. Further, his Medicare insurance was canceled and his credit reports were closed.
When he called the bank, they reportedly told him to talk to Social Security. Westneat said that for two weeks, Johnson tried to call the hotline several times a day, to no avail. Eventually, Johnson went directly to the local Social Security office, which he described as packed with people and very much understaffed, according to The Seattle Times article. Thanks to an employee there, his status was restored as alive.
During a telephone conversation on March 17, 2025, Pam Johnson told Snopes that her husband had gone to the Social Security office on March 13, 2024, and that Westneat had come to their house with a photographer to interview them the next day.
She added that the couple had not received any explanation as to how the false death report had occurred. "They kept passing the buck between the bank and Social Security," she said.
As she spoke, Johnson logged into their bank's online client portal to confirm that the February payment had also been restored to their account, though they were still waiting on the March payment.
While on the telephone with Snopes, she also asked her husband about the status of his Medicare health coverage. Snopes heard him confirm that he had indeed received notice from his health insurance company that his coverage was restored. Johnson was preparing to give an interview to CNN about his ordeal on the afternoon of March 17, 2025.
"For us, this is not life or death but the ramifications can be terrible," Pam Johnson said. "We think Ned is the canary in a coal mine, this is a much bigger story."
As Trump-Musk Target Social Security, Seniors Share Stories of Benefit Cutoffs | Common Dreams. https://www.commondreams.org/news/social-security-benefits. Accessed 17 Mar. 2025.
Desk, News. 'US Social Security Error Costs 82-Year-Old His Benefits and $5,000'. The Express Tribune, 17 Mar. 2025, https://tribune.com.pk/story/2534743/us-social-security-error-costs-82-year-old-benefits-and-5000.
'I Found a "Dead" Person on Social Security in Seattle'. The Seattle Times, 15 Mar. 2025, https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/heres-a-dead-person-on-social-security-in-seattle-with-plenty-to-say/.
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