RICHMOND, Va. (WWBT) – The Office of the City Auditor has found that the Richmond Retirement System (RRS) paid more than $550,000 to deceased former employees over a nine-year period.
The audit found that the RRS:
Did not properly identify deceased retirees in a timely mannerDid not adequately manage overpaymentsDid not timely inform the Board of Trustees about overpayments to deceased retirees
“RRS improperly paid $554,661.50 in benefits to 44 deceased retirees, with $415,660.76 unrecovered due to ineffective controls in preventing, detecting and recovering payments to ineligible recipients,” the audit said.
RRS says it has taken numerous steps to address the issues, including implementing a new tracking process to monitor outstanding overpayments, issuing new letters to beneficiaries and estates, holding weekly meetings to review overpayments, and revising the overpayment collection process.
“Up until early 2024, RRS used a database from the Berwyn Group to obtain death records,” the audit said. “Our research on Berwyn confirmed they maintained one of the most complete commercially available death data sets in the industry. RRS moved to CertiDeath in early 2024 and was an early adopter of this enhanced death database software. Recent experience with CertiDeath has shown improvement.”
“This is not a scandal. This is exactly the sort of improvement processes that we expect to find in audits, and that’s the point of doing these audits,” said Andrew Breton, Richmond City Councilor.
A city council committee asked for the audit to evaluate the timeliness and accuracy of year-end 1099 processing.
State Delegate Mike Jones is a former Richmond councilor and helped hire the city’s new auditor.
“And that’s what we brought him in to do. To find issues, to find misuse, to find processes that are costing taxpayer dollars rather than saving and securing taxpayer dollars,” said State Del. Mike Jones (D), a former Richmond City Councilor.
One retiree received payments totaling more than $247,000, seven years after he died.
“Our auditor was able to identify practices that were not being followed strictly enough, make those recommendations,” said Councilor Breton.
The audit also lists a number of ways to make changes, including updating systems and holding weekly meetings.
“You have to look at the job that the city auditor is doing and what council has done to ensure that these processes are in place so we can watchdog some of these areas and some of these departments,” said State Del. Jones.
The audit notes that some changes have already been made to the retirement system.
The full audit can be found here.
Copyright 2025 WWBT. All rights reserved.