A woman in Maryland, USA faced a nightmare when she tried to renew her driver’s license, only to be flatly rejected because according to the government system, she was declared dead. This mishap threw her life into disarray, forcing her to go through a difficult ordeal to prove that she is alive and well.
According to a report by Washington’s NBC4 television station, the woman, Nicole Paulino, resides in Gaithersburg, Maryland. Last November, she applied to the Maryland Motor Vehicle Administration for a new driver’s license. To her shock, the system at the office showed her as deceased, despite her being alive and standing right there.
Due to her being ”deceased” in the records, the agency informed her that they could not issue her a driver’s license. Adding to her distress, she received a letter from the Internal Revenue Service labeling her as a ”deceased taxpayer”. This caused her health insurance, as well as that of her three children, to be canceled, and she was unable to obtain the inhaler needed for her asthma treatment. Her life was suddenly thrown into chaos, greatly impacting her.
She tearfully mentioned, “This has affected my health, my mental well-being…”
After NBC4 reached out to the Maryland government on Paulino’s behalf, she received a call from the state’s Social Security Administration. The agency acknowledged that the mistake was a result of a typing error. A previous funeral home had reported another individual’s death, but due to an error made by the staff member inputting the social security number, Paulino’s number was entered, leading to her being declared dead.
Paulino shared that she later received a letter from the agency, notifying her that she had been ”resurrected.” Despite her attempts to resolve the issue by contacting government departments on her own, she had not achieved any results. It was only with the help of NBC4 that the matter got resolved.
In a statement provided to the television station, the Social Security Administration stated that their records are ”highly accurate”, with less than 0.3% of the over 3 million death reports received annually requiring corrections.
This implies that there are approximately 10,000 erroneous reports each year in the state, and Paulino’s ordeal is not an isolated case. The Social Security Administration emphasized that anyone wrongly declared dead should promptly contact them for immediate corrective action, providing at least one form of identification to prove their identity.
Similar incidents of individuals being mistakenly marked as deceased by the government have occurred before, such as in Missouri. In a report from 2023, a woman named Madeline-Michelle Carthen was wrongfully declared dead over a decade ago while attending university, leading to her dropping out, losing job opportunities, facing financial difficulties, and even being evicted from her home.
Despite her years-long struggle to be “resurrected” by the relevant authorities, she has yet to see a favorable outcome. Although she is alive, she must prove that she is indeed alive.