A woman from St. Louis, Missouri, has been trying to prove that she is not deceased for decades after learning that her Social Security number was associated with a dead person.
Madeline-Michelle Carthen learned that her Social Security number had been compromised while she was preparing for a summer internship and exchange program in Ghana through Webster University back in 2007. Carthen told KSDK News that her life has been a nightmare ever since due to government red tape.
“A nightmare of corruption. No oversight with government. It’s like a haunting,” she said. “I got denied my financial aid. Now, they’re saying, ‘Prove to us you’re not dead.’”
Carthen added that she initially dismissed the news as a mistake and laughed.
“I laughed,” said Carthen. “I said, ‘What do you mean? I’m sitting right here. I’ve been at school over a year and a half. … How am I dead? Is this going to affect my international internship?’”
Carthen was told to contact the Social Security Administration to have the error fixed, and when she did, she found out that she’d been added to SSA’s Death Master File. According to NBC News, the Death Master File is an internal compilation of SSA records of deceased people.
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Carthen was told her name was added in error and given a death erroneous letter to show that she was still alive to hand over to bureaus. However, Carthen said her troubles didn’t end after she received the letter and instead got worse.
“Well, it got worse because it wasn’t creditors,” she explained. “Being in the Death Master File, it went to the IRS, it went to the Department of Homeland Security, it went to E-verify, all of these things. It just started affecting my life.”
The 52-year-old said that her life has been disrupted ever since, and she was forced to…
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