To curb the spread of COVID-19, many businesses, restaurants, and more were forced to shut down. As a result, the government issued stimulus checks to help out American citizens during the lockdowns that took place in various states due to the spread of coronavirus.
Now, news surfaced, noting that about 1.1 million stimulus checks were sent to dead people. The Government Accountability Office noted that congress authorized stimulus checks from the $2 trillion CARES Act, with $300 billion of the funds going to the actual payment program. According to a report from the GAO, only 160 million payments adding up to $269 billion, were sent. The report from the GAO also noted that 1.1 million payments amounting to $1.4 billion were “mistakenly” sent to dead people since April 30. The stimulus payments are based on tax returns filed by the deceased in 2018 and 2019.