WASHINGTON — Thousands of workers over the age of 100 applied for employment verification through the U.S. government in recent years.

It’s not a trend toward an older workforce, but a sign of identity fraud, according to federal auditors.

A recent watchdog review found that at least 6.5 million active Social Security numbers belong to people who are at least 112 years old and likely deceased. But only 35 known living individuals worldwide had reached that age as of October 2013, according to the Gerontology Research Group.

The Social Security Administration’s inspector general said in a report on Monday that the questionable identification numbers put the government at risk of fraud and waste.

The review found that one individual opened bank accounts using Social Security numbers for individuals born in 1869 and 1893.

The official database of active Social Security numbers showed that both beneficiaries were alive, meaning they would be older than 145 and 121 years, respectively.

Auditors also discovered that nearly 67,000 Social Security numbers in recent years were used to report wages for people other than the cardholders. The workers reported about $3 billion in earnings between 2006 and 2011.

The report, which will be the focus of a Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee hearing on Monday, faulted the Social Security Administration for poorly managing data on “numberholders who exceeded maximum reasonable life expectancies and were likely deceased.”

Among the issues that auditors found, nearly 3,900 Social Security numbers were run through the U.S. government’s E-Verify system for people more than a century old between 2008 and 2011.


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