Validation Is Crucial

Fewer than 1,000 people have
reached 110, and the GRG has recorded only 17 documented elders as
having reached 115—and five of these are in doubt. Therefore, the GRG
says, the older the claimed age, the more rigorous the standard to
which it must be held. “A significant majority of worldwide claimants
to be age 110-or-over have subsequently been proven to be false,”
writes the GRG. “These individuals and more often their family or
friends have their own personal motives for claiming these persons and,
we are sad to report, are occasionally disingenuous (not
well-intentioned).”

Some of GRG’s “incomplete, exaggerated, or fraudulent” cases? MSNBC aired a report on Kookoo Molookoo
of South Africa, who claims she’s 134. The reporter produced a piece of
paper showing she was born July 4, 1874, but it’s a relatively recent
document because she was born before records were kept. The GRG notes
that she would have been 52 when she gave birth to her youngest
daughter (who is 82), which calls Molookoo’s age into question.

Habib Miyan,
who died in August 2008, was from India and claimed to be 139, but the
GRG says he changed his birth year story several times. BBC News
claimed that his pension record would show him to be the world’s
longest-registered old-age pensioner; however, the GRG says that
because the name on the pension record is actually not his, this might
have been more a case of pension fraud. For more on these and other
claims, visit GRG’s Incomplete, Exaggerated, or Fraudulent Cases page.