No. The story that 150 year olds are getting social security is false. What happens is that the year 1875 is used as a marker by programmers when there is missing information in a record. This is done to make the record easy to find later and is clearly an “error” that no one would take seriously. When seen, it notifies the person in charge of the record to correct the information. No payment is made.

As for other elderly people, the current system provides for notification of death by the states when a death certificate is processed. Depending upon when someone dies, an extra payment may be made, but it has to be returned to the government by the estate. For example, the law is that one is entitled to social security for each month they are alive. So if you die on March 3, you will rightfully receive a social security payment for March. However if you die on February 28, you are not entitled to the March payment. Now you may still get the March payment depending on when payments are sent and when the notification is received by social security. However your estate must return that payment and social security will attempt to retrieve it from the bank account in which it was deposited.

There are some stories of criminals hiding the death of elderly relatives to continue receiving their social security checks. However, this is less common now than it used to be because it is much harder to get away with. It used to be relatives were responsible for notification of death. Since we have fully entered the computer age, the states now do that, so harder to pull off. Only works if no one ever finds out the person died. With the interconnection of information, suspicions get raised when said persons are no longer using their other benefits such as Medicare. It is much harder to just disappear in today's world .