Americans are getting older, but not this old: Social Security records show that 6.5 million people in the U.S. have reached the ripe old age of 112. As of last fall, there were only 42 people known to be that old in the entire world. But Social Security does not have death records for millions of these people, with the oldest born in 1869. Only 13 of the people are still getting Social Security benefits, the report says. But for others, their Social Security numbers are still active, so a number could be used to report wages, open bank accounts, obtain credit cards or claim fraudulent tax refunds. Nearly 67,000 of the Social Security numbers were used to report more than $3 billion in wages, tips, and self-employment income from 2006 to 2011. Almost all the numbers are from paper records generated before the agency started using electronic records in 1972.
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