Dozens of suspected Nazi and SS war criminals collected millions of dollars in Social Security payouts, according to an Associated Press investigative report on Sunday.

The U.S. Department of Justice allegedly made payments through its Nazi investigating body, the Office of Special Investigations, to expedite the process of deportation of suspected Nazi members who were living in the United States.

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At least in one case, a monthly benefit of US$1,500 was used as a bargaining chip for a Nazi war criminal to voluntarily leave the country and face possible prosecution abroad, AP reported.

The result of a two-year analysis of records and interviews tallied the number of beneficiaries to 38 among the 66 who were forced out of the U.S. since 1979.

The March 1999 Social Security records show that 28 former Nazis received a total of US$1.5 million. The AP speculates that since then, taxpayers' money has funneled millions of dollars to former members of Hitler's henchmen who fled mostly to Europe.

The Justice Department denied the allegations, but records the AP recovered revealed that the Social Security Administration voiced strong disagreements over the Justice Department's method of forcing ex-Nazis to accept the loss of their citizenship.

Social Security officials declined to name those who continue to benefit from federal pension. The AP has traced four living beneficiaries who are in their 90s, including one who admitted to serving the Nazi SS unit that killed 13,000 Polish Jews in Warsaw in 1943.

Other former Nazis who continued receiving Social Security benefits until their deaths are the celebrated NASA rocket scientist Arthur Rudolph and John Avdzej, the Nazi-installed mayor of Belarus who helped arrest and murder thousands of Jews during the Belorussian Holocaust.

All identified Nazi war criminals immigrated to the United States in the years following the Second World War, but were forced to leave the country in the mid-1990s to late 2000s on condition of keeping their Social Security benefits.

TagsAntisemitism, Law Crime, Social Issues, Nazi Germany, Social Security