Fact Check: Did Rep Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez really cash grandma's Social Security checks for 14 years?

WASHINGTON, DC: The internet loves a good scandal, especially when it involves a high-profile politician - someone like Democrat firebrand Rep Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

A rumor has been making the rounds on social media alleging that AOC’s family had been cashing her deceased grandmother’s Social Security checks for a staggering 14 and a half years.

Claim: AOC's family cashing her deceased grandmother’s Social Security checks

It all started on April 1, when the Facebook page 'Reagan Was Right' posted a photo of AOC alongside a scathing caption.

“AOC has no excuse for why her family has been cashing her dead Grandmother’s Social Security checks for a decade and a half: ‘We must have just overlooked it.’ They overlooked a $3,400 deposit from the SSA every month for 14 and a half years? Sounds likely," it read.

Naturally, the comment section lit up - with the top comment linking to an article from a site called The Dunning-Kruger Times.

The headline declared: “AOC’s Family ‘Overlooked’ 14.5 Years of Cashing Grandma’s Social Security Checks.”

The article kicked off by stating: "In a shocking revelation that has left absolutely no one surprised, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is facing scrutiny over her family’s alleged 14.5-year ‘oversight’ of depositing her deceased grandmother’s Social Security checks. When pressed for an explanation, AOC reportedly shrugged and said, ‘We must have just overlooked it.’"

"That’s right—just a little bookkeeping mix-up. Who among us hasn’t accidentally cashed a $3,400 check every single month for a decade and a half? It’s not like that adds up to over half a million dollars or anything. Oops!" it continued.

The article also quoted a so-called financial analyst Joe Barron. “Balancing a budget is hard. One minute, you’re paying rent, the next minute, you’re mysteriously benefiting from a government payout meant for someone who no longer exists. It happens," Barron supposedly said.

Fact Check: False

The entire thing was pure satire. AOC’s family definitely did not cash any Social Security checks, and there is absolutely zero evidence that this ever happened, Snopes confirmed.

In fact, both 'Reagan Was Right' and 'The Dunning-Kruger Times' belong to America’s Last Line of Defense (ALLOD) network, which is literally a satire network. Their whole schtick is posting fake, over-the-top stories that poke fun at political figures.

There were obvious signs, including the bio of Reagan Was Right that clearly states: “Nothing on this page is real.” Furthermore, the image from the viral post was stamped with an ‘S’ for satire and included the words “Nothing on this page is real.”

Meawhile, The Dunning-Kruger Times has an “About Us” page where it calls itself a "subsidiary of the 'America’s Last Line of Defense' network of parody, satire, and tomfoolery."

In fact, the site’s name itself is a joke.

The Dunning-Kruger effect, according to Britannica, is "a cognitive bias whereby people with limited knowledge or competence in a given intellectual or social domain greatly overestimate their own knowledge or competence in that domain relative to objective criteria or to the performance of their peers or of people in general.”

AOC isn’t the first target

This isn’t the first time ALLOD has stirred things up with fake claims about politicians. They previously ran a similar hoax about Rep Ilhan Omar, claiming she also cashed her dead grandmother’s Social Security checks. 

Other ridiculous AOC-related satire in the past include a claim that she once posted, “Printing money is the only way out of inflation.” Another rumor was that she said, “We pay soldiers way too much.”

Of course, both were completely made up.

This article contains remarks made on the Internet by individual people and organizations. MEAWW cannot confirm them independently and does not support claims or opinions being made online