Let’s just get this out of the way. That $1,702 stimulus check you saw on TikTok? The one sandwiched between a dance challenge and a video of a cat falling off a couch? It’s a ghost. A mirage. It’s not real, it was never real, and it’s not coming.
I feel like I have to say this every few months, like some kind of digital town crier shouting into a hurricane of algorithm-fueled nonsense. No, there is no fourth federal stimulus check. No, Trump isn't mailing you a "DOGE dividend." No, there isn't some secret IRS direct deposit about to hit your account.
What there is, however, is a thriving cottage industry built on your hope and desperation. And business, my friends, is booming.
The Ghosts of Stimulus Past
Every time a politician opens their mouth, a new stimulus rumor gets its wings. It’s become a predictable, and frankly boring, cycle. Remember Senator Josh Hawley’s "American Worker Rebate Act"? It proposed a check, got referred to a committee, and then promptly vanished into the legislative ether. Poof. Gone. Then you had Rep. Ro Khanna suggesting a $2,000 check to offset tariffs, which he announced on X, the digital graveyard of good ideas. He said he was proposing a bill. We're still waiting.
And don't even get me started on the "DOGE dividend." The what? A plan supposedly cooked up with Elon Musk's "Department of Government Efficiency" to send out $5,000 checks. This wasn't a policy proposal. It was a fever dream someone had at a tech conference. Did anyone in Washington actually take this seriously for more than the time it takes to tweet about it? Or was it just chum for the 24-hour news cycle?
These proposals are like movie trailers for films that will never get made. They generate a little buzz, get people excited, and then disappear without a trace, leaving behind nothing but a few misleading headlines for content farms to recycle for the next six months. They aren't serious attempts at governance; they're campaign slogans disguised as legislation. And we keep falling for it.
Your Timeline is a Lie
I can see it now. The grainy screenshot of a fake news article, shared on Facebook by a well-meaning relative, with the caption, "Finally! Some help is on the way!" This is where the real damage is done. The internet's amplification of these half-truths and outright lies is relentless.
The grifters are smart. They latch onto a kernel of truth to make the lie seem plausible. Several states—New York, Pennsylvania, Georgia—are sending out small, targeted "inflation relief checks" or property tax rebates. These are real, but they are state-level programs with strict eligibility requirements, often amounting to a couple hundred bucks. The scammers take this fact, inflate the number to an oddly specific $1,702 (which was actually Alaska's Permanent Fund Dividend, a totally unrelated state program), and blast it across the internet as a nationwide stimulus. Is a $1,702 stimulus check coming? Latest news on claims of 2025 payments
These scams are just lazy. No, lazy isn't the word—they're predatory. They're designed to harvest your personal information when you click the shady link to "claim your payment." They’re phishing operations dressed up as good news. And the platforms that let this stuff spread? They just shrug and count the ad revenue, and honestly... it’s infuriating. The IRS has to issue constant warnings about people impersonating them, using terms like "stimulus check" instead of the official "economic impact payment" to sound legit while asking you for your bank details. It’s a mess.
The real money story, offcourse, is the one nobody’s talking about because it’s complicated and doesn't fit in a TikTok video. A JPMorgan strategist, David Kelly, pointed out that because of how Trump’s "One Big Beautiful Bill Act" was structured, a lot of people will be getting unusually large tax refunds in 2026. He estimates the average refund could jump by over $500.
He calls it a "stealth stimulus" that could actually pour enough money into the economy to spark another round of inflation. A tax-refund surge is coming, JPMorgan strategist says — and it’ll shift US economy like a new round of stimulus checks So, while everyone is chasing the ghost of a $1,702 check, the real economic jolt is coming through the tax code—a system so convoluted most people won't see it coming. But that story requires nuance, and nuance doesn't get clicks.
I'm sitting here ranting about all this, and maybe I'm the one who's out of touch. Maybe people just need a shred of hope to cling to, even if it's fake. But then I read the IRS warnings about scams targeting the vulnerable and I think, no, this isn't harmless hope. This is actively hurting people.
The Check Ain't in the Mail
Let's be brutally honest. The government is not your rich uncle who's about to slip you a couple grand. The era of massive, pandemic-style federal payouts is over. What's left is a chaotic information ecosystem where political soundbites and outright scams prey on the financially stressed. Stop refreshing your bank account waiting for a magic deposit. It's not coming. The real story is buried in tax law and inflation forecasts—the boring, complicated stuff that actually dictates the money in your pocket. The rest is just noise.