Claim: Barack Obama uses a Social Security number belonging to man born in 1890.
| FALSE |
Example: [Collected via e-mail, June 2011]
An investigation has revealed the identity of the man whose Social Security number (SSN) has been illegally used by Obama: Jean Paul Ludwig, who was born in France in 1890, emigrated to the United States in 1924, and was assigned SSN 042-68-4425 in or about March, 1977. Ludwig lived most of his adult life in Connecticut. His SSN begins with the digits 042, which are among those reserved for Connecticut residents. Obama never lived or worked in that state, so there is no reason for his SSN to start with the digits 042.
Now comes the best part. Ludwig spent the final months of his life in Hawaii, where he died. Conveniently, Obama's grandmother, Madelyn Payne Dunham, worked part-time in the Probate Office in the Honolulu Hawaii Courthouse, and therefore had access to the SSNs of deceased individuals. The Social Security Administration was never informed of Ludwig's death, and because he never received Social Security benefits there were no benefits to stop and no questions were raised. The suspicion, of course, is that Dunham, knowing her grandson was not a U.S. citizen — either because he was born in Kenya or became a citizen of Indonesia upon his adoption by Lolo Soetoro — merely scoured the probate records until she found someone who died who was not receiving Social Security benefits, and "selected" that SSN for Obama.
Origins: This fantastical tale about President Barack Obama's having used a Social Security number (SSN) issued to a French immigrant named Jean Paul Ludwig, born in 1890, is easily debunked. As can be verified through the Social Security Death Index (
SSDI), a database of death records created from the United States Social Security Administration's Death Master File Extract, the Social Security Administration was in fact informed of Ludwig's death, and the Social Security number assigned to him was not, as claimed, the same as that assigned to Barack Obama
(042-68-4425), but rather a completely different number
(045-26-8722). Ludwig also didn't pass away until 1981, by which time Barack Obama had long since been assigned a Social Security number of his own.
Click
here to view the SSDI record for Jean Paul Ludwig.
The premise of this claim is also flawed in concept, as Barack Obama is a natural born
citizen of the United States, and thus there would have been no reason for his grandmother to appropriate someone else's Social Security number for use by him. (Since non-citizens can legally obtain Social Security numbers, the issue is largely moot, as possession of a Social Security number is not in itself an indicator of citizenship.)
Likewise, the claim that Social Security numbers beginning with 042 are "reserved for Connecticut residents" is false. As noted by Wikipedia, the area number portion of a SSN does not (and never did) necessarily correspond to the state in which an applicant was born or resides:
The Area Number, the first three digits, is assigned by the geographical region. Prior to 1973, cards were issued in local Social Security offices around the country and the Area Number represented the office code in which the card was issued. This did not necessarily have to be in the area where the applicant lived, since a person could apply for their card in any Social Security office. Since 1973, when SSA began assigning SSNs and issuing cards centrally from Baltimore, the area number assigned has been based on the ZIP code in the mailing address provided on the application for the original Social Security card. The applicant's mailing address does not have to be the same as their place of residence. Thus, the Area Number does not necessarily represent the State of residence of the applicant, neither prior to 1973, nor since.
(A simple explanation might be that someone misread or mistyped the first digit of a Honolulu ZIP code as a 0 instead of a 9 when processing Barack Obama's Social Security application, resulting in its mistakenly being routed as if it had originated from Connecticut.)
Last updated: 13 June 2011
Urban Legends Reference Pages © 1995-2011 by Barbara and David P. Mikkelson.
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