- We’re so sorry if you’re one of the roughly 10,000 people wrongfully declared dead each year.
Imagine what it would be like if you woke up dead tomorrow. We know, we know — that can’t actually happen and it’s just stupid wordplay.
Except that it did happen to Nicole Paulino.
The Maryland woman was somewhat shocked when the state’s Motor Vehicle Administration (MVA) refused to renew her driver’s license. They told her she couldn’t get a new license because she was dead.
As it turned out, this wasn’t just some weird bug in the MVA system. Soon enough, everyone from the IRS to her health insurance company announced they were done dealing with Paulino because she was apparently no longer alive.
After wrangling with several agencies (all of whom were surprised to be talking to a dead person), Paulino finally got a clarifying call from Social Security. It turned out that someone at a funeral home somewhere had gotten a digit wrong with an actual deceased individual’s social security number and reported that Paulino had died instead.
Although she has since been “resurrected,” Paulino is now left trying to get all her accounts and registrations back to the world of the living. Yet, perhaps the worst part is that she’s not alone — this kind of thing happens all the time.
Which means that anyone you pass on the street could be one of the walking dead. At least on paper.
‘It Appears that I Am Deceased’
Nicole Paulino lives in Gaithersburg, some 20 miles north of Washington, D.C. One morning in November 2024, she woke up, feeling perfectly normal and very much alive.
Her big chore for the day was to get her driver’s license renewed. So, she got in her car and headed to the Maryland MVA to stand in the queue.
When she got to the customer service counter, however, she was in for the shock of her life. The service agent informed Paulino that her license couldn’t be renewed.
The reason was that she was dead.
According to the MVA system, Paulino had recently passed away and therefore wasn’t eligible for a new license. She found the whole thing just a little disturbing.
“It [appeared] that I am deceased. I got a little frightened, I’m not gonna lie, and surprised, because I am alive,” Paulino told NBC Washington.
Things got worse after it turned out that it wasn’t just the MVA that believed Paulino had died. Soon after, she received a letter from the IRS referring to her as a “deceased taxpayer.”
Then, her health insurance company somehow received word that Paulino was no more. Just like that, her health insurance was canceled — despite the fact that she and her three kids required things like asthma medications.
“This really, really messes up my life,” said Paulino in what we believe is something of an understatement.
One Wrong Number
Considering that she wasn’t dead, Paulino started calling Maryland government agencies, trying to figure out what was going on. She also hoped that somebody could help her return to life in an official capacity.
Eventually, she received a phone call from the Social Security Administration. The agent at the other end of the line finally shed light on the situation.
As it turns out, someone else from somewhere else had recently died. Consequently, the funeral home handling that person’s burial had then attempted to report them as dead.
However, they did a bit of an oopsie. The funeral home typo-ed one digit on the dead person’s social security number — and accidentally reported Paulino dead.
Yet, that still didn’t get the issue resolved. It wasn’t until Paulino went public with her story that she finally got a letter from Social Security congratulating her on her successful resurrection.
That said, her troubles continue. She now has to call virtually every company and agency she’s ever dealt with and try to wrangle them into changing her status to “alive” in their systems.
Considering how difficult it is to even get a human being on the phone these days, Paulino’s problems are far from over.
‘Highly Accurate’ Records
This sounds like a freakishly rare incident, doesn’t it? Indeed, Social Security states that its records are “highly accurate.”
Out of the roughly three million death reports it receives each year, less than 0.33% are erroneous. Whew, that’s a relief…
Wait a second, here. Let’s crunch those numbers.
If we calculate 0.33% of three million, that’s still 9,900 wrongful death reports each year. In other words, 27 or so people are mistakenly reported dead every day.
Suddenly, this doesn’t sound so good.
And sure enough, anybody could get declared dead at any given moment. It doesn’t matter how old you are.
On the younger end of the scale, we have Elise Allen. In 2023, the 13-year-old from Maryland was mistakenly declared dead, leading to her family getting slapped with massive health and dental bills due to canceled insurance.
But perhaps no one has it worse than Darby Nye from Arlington, Virginia. He has officially died not once, but twice.
Nye first learned he was dead in 2021. He got the record set straight the following year, only to learn that he had been counted among the dead again in 2023.
The problem of mistaken death reports is so rampant that there are law firms whose entire business revolves around resurrecting people. You know there’s a big problem when someone’s job title is “CEO of Trying to Prove People Are Not Actually Dead Inc.”