Dying in the digital and SS # era...

My house address gets a letter today from the IRS but instead of my name, its my father's. Now this is interesting because he has been deceased since 2007 and has never lived at my address. So, I was expecting something like, "your parents didn't file their taxes correctly for 2004, 2005 or some such mush but instead its a notice that my father's identity may have been "stolen" to gain employment. Ok, let's stop a second, doesn't the SS Admin destroy a deceased person's SS # after the estate has gotten SS payments stopped with an official death certificate and got the $250 from SS for the deceased person's burial...? But again, this is the IRS and not the SS Admin and their form letter is addressed to my dad like he's still alive and needs to protect his identity (inform the credit bureaus!!). So, I will call tomorrow and see how many circles I have to turn around in to get the IRS and the SS Admin to confirm that Mr. X Z is indeed dead and to nuke his fricking SS # for the next 50 years so no thieving puke can ever use it. AND maybe somebody for some fed agency go find out where this "X Z" is working and cuff him right there and frog march him out of the place. That would probably be worth watching!!

It could be a phishing scam w/ official looking documents. It's a strange old world. Things aren't always as they would seem at first glance.

Just to be on the safe side ... confirm that any contact info they provided in the letter is legit. IE: Phone numbers, addresses, etc. before responding to them.

Social Security numbers for deceased people are not destroyed they are put in the Social Security Death Index (SSDI). The SSDI exists for financial institutions to verify that the Social Security numbers they are given belong to living people.

You can check the SSDI for deaths up to FEB 28, 2014 at a number of sites.

https://stevemorse.org/ssdi/ssdi.html

Google the phone numbers on the letters. People have lists of the numbers used by scammers on those mailers. Honestly I would just call the number you find on the agencies website.

But yeah underage and deceased SSNs are used by illegals all the **** time.

I googled the IRS location where this letter came from and the phone number there ended up a national one that got me on a various menu where none of the options fit the issue and there wasn't (or at least I didn't wait) an option for waiting for the rep. So, I called the number provided in the letter and got onto the same IRS phone system, although they had an extension that handled id theft. I got on that and they told me they were too busy today to handle my call. Doesn't sound like a scammer to me.

I will make a copy of the letter that was sent to my address and a photo copy of my dad's state death cert and send them to the IRS address where we sent my kids' taxes returns this year (its the same location that sent the letter to my address) and ask what gives. Dad's been dead 10 1/2 years so snail mail time to me is nothing. We'll see what they say in a month or two time.