Associated Press:

A government investigator says 89,000 stimulus payments of $250 each went to people who were either dead or in prison.

The Social Security Administration’s inspector general said in a report Thursday that $18 million went to 72,000 people who were dead. The report estimates that a little more than half the payments were returned.

The report said $4.3 million went to a little more than 17,000 prison inmates.

The White House just released a report late last week praising how the stimulus bill was being managed and how “remarkably little of the money has gone out fraudulently.”

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