War pension claims like that were common and not fraud.

The pension is claimed by the wife of the veteran , it was a practice to marry a very young girl very late in life partly because of the pension.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Civil_War_widows_wh...

The person you are referring to was eligible as a disabled child of veteran https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irene_Triplett

There are many age curiosities out there like the fact the grandson of John Tyler the 10th president who was born in 1790 is still alive, I.e his grandfather was born 235 years ago!

they are just that curiosities, not really fraud and even when it is one, it never significant just like voter fraud never turns out to be one .

If it's designated by law to be inheritable then it's a moot point.

It's also worth noting that OASDI is not the same as a Civil War pension. One was set up to support men who fought in service of the Federal government, the other was set up to keep the Old Aged, Survivors, and Disabled Insured. They're legally separate programs and thus have different statutes regulating who can draw benefit from them.

Even if that is the case, there should be an easy way to query that. even If they update the systems, and discover zero fraud or bad data it’s still a net win