US paid $20 million in benefits to suspected Nazis, probe finds

The Social Security Administration paid $20.2 million in benefits between 1962 and this year to 133 people who were alleged, or found, to have been involved in Nazi persecution, according to a new report.

The inspector general for the agency found the payments had been made because the Social Security Act contained a loophole that didn’t prohibit the distribution of the benefits. Congress passed a law late last year that ends the loophole.

Of the $20.2 million, $14.5 million was paid to 95 beneficiaries who were not deported from the United States. Thirty-eight beneficiaries who were deported from the U.S. received $5.7 million.

The report found the Social Security Administration also paid four beneficiaries more than $15,600.

{mosads}”It is outrageous that any Nazis were able to receive benefits, but this report also makes clear that the Social Security Administration lacked the legal authority to terminate benefits in far too many of these cases,” Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) said in a statement Monday.

“I helped lead the effort last year to pass legislation that would end benefits for the handful of Nazis who slipped through the cracks and continued to receive benefits.”

A 2008 report by the Department of Justice (DOJ) found, for example, one person who had served as a guard at several Nazi concentration camps started receiving benefits in 1989. The man left the U.S. once he learned the DOJ had planned to file a denaturalization action against him. While the man’s citizenship was revoked in 1989, he still received nearly $400,000 in benefits between 1989 and this year.

Maloney had requested the inspector general report after an Associated Press investigation last year found that alleged Nazi criminals had received millions in federal benefits.