It may not be true, but it's not that far-fetched to me that there are families out there collecting checks on dead family members, and the individual on whose behalf the money is being sent would be 150 years old if alive. 150 years old might be an exaggeration, but there were something like 19 million people born before 1920 with no death data on file at Social Security and 44,000 of them were collecting benefits still.