DOGE Investigating Potential Social Security Fraud — Millions Aged 130+ on Rolls

By Hannah Knudsen (Breitbart)

The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) is investigating potential Social Security fraud, and its head Elon Musk posted startling information from its database.

“Social Security database, these are the numbers of people in each age bucket with the death field set to FALSE!” Musk began, posting an image of a chart with age brackets going all the way up to 369 years old.

Indeed, the info showed millions of individuals listed in some of the more unlikely brackets. For instance, 4.7 million were listed from ages 100-109, but it gets worse: 3.6 million are listed for 110 to 119, 3.4 million for 120 to 129, 3.9 million for 130 to 139, 3.4 million for 140-149, and 1.3 million for 150-159.

There is even one listed in the age bracket 360-369.

“Maybe Twilight is real and there are a lot of vampires collecting Social Security,” Musk joked.

“Yes, there are FAR more ‘eligible’ social security numbers than there are citizens in the USA,” Musk added. “This might be the biggest fraud in history.”

“Looking into this,” DOGE reposted.

This coincides with remarks Musk made on February 11.

According to data from Pew Research, there were roughly 101,000 individuals 100 or older in the U.S. in 2024.

PolitiFact spoke to the Social Security office and said it offered two possible explanations. One is that “Government databases may code someone as 150 years old for reasons peculiar to the large and complex Social Security database.” The office also admitted that “improper payments” have long been a concern, but maintained that they comprise “a small share of all payments.”

In other words, the concerns were not put to bed, as it conceded improper payments are an issue. Other possible explanations include multiple fields for birthdates listed, as well as a standard coding procedure, per the outlet:

Under an international standard called ISO 8601, a missing value for a date is coded as May 20, 1875, because that was the date of an international standards-setting conference held in Paris, known as the “Convention du Mètre.”

For that reason, under some coding systems, a missing value for a date will default to 1875 — which in the year 2025 produces a round figure of 150.

“First of all, let’s remember President Trump has promised that he is not going to affect the payments and the process for Social Security and Medicare for seniors in America. And so, you know, he has made that promise,” Saul Anuzis, president of the 60 Plus Association, said during an interview on Breitbart News Saturday, noting that there is fraud in both Medicare and Social Security that needs to be discovered. And those discoveries, he continued, will only help the programs in the long run.

“Medicare in particular has huge amounts of fraud in the system. You, could strengthen and protect Social Security and Medicare by probably 20 to 25 percent of all its funds by going after the waste and the fraud inside the system. I mean, there are billions of dollars of checks that are going out to people that either are not U.S. citizens — don’t deserve it … And so I think what you get to find with DOGE and what’s happening with Elon Musk and his team is they’re going to find all kinds of abuses … particularly inside of Medicare that is going to give — provide more funds to give to the people who are actually in need,” he predicted.

This, he emphasized, “will help guarantee that Social Security and Medicare last longer” and are funded longer, “and they’ll be able to do that without cutting a single dime from people’s benefits.”

“All they have to do is go after the fraud,” he added.