Richmond, Va. (Newsradiowrva.com) - The Office of the City Auditor has found that the Richmond Retirement System (RRS) sent roughly $554,000 in payments to deceased retirees over a nine-year period.
A new audit report has found that the RRS did not prevent, detect, or recover the full amount in payments made to people who had passed away.
“RRS improperly paid $554,661.50 in benefits to 44 deceased retirees, with $415,660.76 unrecovered due to ineffective controls in preventing, detecting, and recovering payments to ineligible recipients,” the audit said.
The audit also found that RRS officials did not inform the Board of Trustees about overpayments to deceased retirees in a timely fashion.
RRS says it is now implementing corrective actions, which includes the use of a new tracking process to monitor outstanding overpayments and weekly meetings to review overpayments.
“Up until early 2024, RRS used a database from the Berwyn Group to obtain death records,” the audit said. “Our research on Berwyn confirmed they maintained one of the most complete commercially available death data sets in the industry. RRS moved to CertiDeath in early 2024 and was an early adopter of this enhanced death database software. Recent experience with CertiDeath has shown improvement.”
The full report can be viewed here.
