A Maryland woman--who is very much alive--learned from her bank that she was actually dead.
The Captial Gazette reports Ellen Baron learned on September 20 that all of her accounts had been frozen, her balances set to zero.
She called her bank and was told the Social Security Administration had notified the branch she was dead.
The newspaper reports it took her two weeks of going back and forth to her bank and local SSA office in order to prove she was still alive.
The mix-up was due to a key-in error, Baron told the Capital Gazette, and caused several other problems. She also lost her prescription plan and health insurance.
Errors like what happened to Barron are relatively rare but do happen. About 1,000 people per month are erroneously declared dead, the Social Security Administration has previously said.
