John Doe, Operation Death Match, and the Social Security Death Index (SSDI)

If you saw the Oregonian story (or in other news sources):

“John Doe’ faces deportation after serving sentence for stealing slain Ohio boy’s name,“ January 28, 2011, by Bryan Denson, you might have read this part of the article:

“…. His fraud was uncovered last year when agents of the State Department’s Diplomatic Security Service ran a data search of passport applications against the names and identifications of deceased citizens. The ongoing probe, known as Operation Death Match, spit out the name Jason Robert Evers, which ultimately lead them to Krastev….” (Link to full article.)

To those who don’t know otherwise, this Operation Death Match sounds like serious business – and it is. HOWEVER, you don’t need any special diplomatic, top-secret privileges to do a check of your own employees against a public database of deceased U.S. citizens:

You can look up that employee in the Social Security Death Index (SSDI).

Previous blog post on a related subject: Finding Death Records and Obituaries in Oregon (and beyond)

Other Death Indexes: Here is a gateway to state death databases and there is also this.