You really cannot make this stuff up. This report claims that this problem was discovered ten years ago and still has not been fixed. I can’t even begin to estimate how much money was and is still being paid to dead people. Someone is getting the checks. I wonder if the SSA knows whether the checks are cashed or not; probably not, civil service folks don’t want to bother with that. This seems to me to be something that could be easily fixed. Obviously,Americans are not reporting to the SSA when someone dies. OMG
Elon Musk’s DOGE team has unearthed jaw-dropping irregularity from the U.S. Social Security database.
The numbers are truly mind-boggling: over 25 million Americans registered aged 100 and older, with some purportedly older than the U.S. Constitution itself.
Late Sunday night, Musk tweeted a staggering claim accompanied by a table of ages, suggesting that the Social Security Administration might be paying out benefits to “vampires.”
The table Musk provided shows:
- Age 0-9: 38,825,456
- Age 10-19: 44,326,480
- Age 20-29: 47,995,478
- Age 30-39: 52,106,915
- Age 40-49: 47,626,581
- Age 50-59: 45,740,805
- Age 60-69: 46,381,281
- Age 70-79: 33,404,412
- Age 80-89: 15,165,127
- Age 90-99: 6,054,154
- Age 100-109: 4,734,407
- Age 110-119: 3,627,007
- Age 120-129: 3,472,849
- Age 130-139: 3,936,311
- Age 140-149: 3,542,044
- Age 150-159: 1,345,083
- Age 160-169: 121,807
- Age 170-179: 6,087
- Age 180-189: 695
- Age 190-199: 448
- Age 200-209: 879
- Age 210-219: 866
- Age 220-229: 1,039
- Age 240-249: 1
- Age 360-369: 1
This information released by Musk aligns with the audit conducted by the Social Security Administration Office of the Inspector General (SSA OIG) in 2015.
According to the 2023 report:
In 2015, we reported that SSA had not established controls to annotate death information on the Numident records of numberholders who exceeded maximum reasonable life expectancies of age 112 or older and were likely deceased.
At the time, only 35 known living individuals worldwide were age 112 or older, however, SSA’s Numident included 6.5 million numberholders age 112 or older whose record did not contain death information.
Therefore, the numberholders’ information did not appear in the full DMF. We recommended SSA add death information to approximately 1.5 million Numident records where the numberholders’ death information appeared in SSA payment records.
We also recommended SSA determine whether it could efficiently correct the approximately 5 million remaining records. SSA agreed to explore the legal and technical feasibility, as well as the cost, to establish an automated process to update the millions of Numident records for individuals who appeared to be alive and age 112 or older, but ultimately decided not to update these records.
In response to our 2015 report, SSA considered multiple options, including adding presumed death information to these Numident records. SSA ultimately decided not to proceed because the “. . . options would be costly to implement, would be of little benefit to the agency, would largely duplicate information already available to data exchange consumers and would create cost for the states and other data exchange partners.”
SSA also believed a regulation would be required to allow it to add death information to these records, and adding presumed death information to the Numident would increase the risk of inadvertent release of living individuals’ personal information in the DMF.
We note that, as of January 2023, the full DMF included death information on approximately 137 million deceased numberholders. Over 18 million missing death records represents more than 10 percent of the records in the full DMF.
Therefore, the death information SSA currently provides Federal benefit-paying agencies–and will begin providing to the Department of the Treasury’s Do Not Pay initiative in December 2023–to help prevent improper payments to deceased individuals, omit information for more than 1 of every 10 deceased numberholders.
As of 2024, the U.S. Census Bureau estimates that approximately 101,000 Americans are aged 100 and older, representing about 0.03% of the total U.S. population, according to the Pew Research Center.
Individuals aged 110 and above are referred to as supercentenarians, a subgroup that is exceedingly rare. As of February 2025, the Gerontology Research Group reported that 136 Americans belong to this category.
Currently, the oldest living American is Naomi Whitehead, born on September 26, 1910, in Georgia, making her 114 years old. The longest-lived person in U.S. history is Sarah Knauss, who lived to be 119 years and 97 days, passing away on December 30, 1999.
For years, conservatives have sounded the alarm on government waste, fraud, and abuse—particularly within entitlement programs.
The Social Security Administration (SSA), riddled with inefficiencies, appears to have an entire army of ghost beneficiaries cashing in taxpayer-funded benefits.
Drive on Elon!!!!
When I saw that one of us was over 360 years old I thought, I’ll have one of what she had.
LOL, me too Mike, how do we find out what she/he drank?
Interesting. The Social Security Administration was not informed of many deaths, mostly years ago when there was no electronic reporting.
This reports shows that the SSA knew about the problem and placed millions of SS numbers into a Do Not Pay list. Then the Inspector General of the same agency reported on that same problem and recommended a fix be found.
The SSA then determined that fixing the database, by finding every single one of the people who died in the USA and double-checking every single SS number ever issued, would be prohibitively expensive.
Now the 6 computer whiz children that Musk has hired into his pretend agency–which was never establish in law and has no authority at all–AT ALL–has uncovered the report that the SS IG wrote 4 years ago. Well done, Elon.
By the way, is Elon an employee of the US government? Has he been authorized to audit anything or anyone? Why is there NOT A SINGLE PERSON in DOGE who has any training or education or experience in auditing?
Was Musk appointed and approved by the Senate? He’s not vetted by the FBI or anyone else. Why is he doing anything at all?
Why isn’t anyone in law enforcement arresting Musk and his co-conspirators? Is the president intimidating people? Is the president firing people if they look into such crimes.
It’s not like Trump would fire Inspectors General or law enforcement agency heads, would he?
Hm, interesting comments, albeit somewhat contradictory in and of themselves. Your comments tell me you’ve not vetted anything you are saying. You stated “no authority at all,” You are correct, neither Elon nor anyone in his agency have any authority. They merely research, discover, and report to Trump. That’s where the authority rests. So what is you point you are frustratingly trying to make other than showing your ignorance of the situation as a whole. Furthermore as to you comments reference the “agency,” once again, you are absolutely in the dark. Elon is running an “agency” by the legal definition of one. Congress has no authority whatsoever over Elon or his agency. He and it were both created by the president, which is completely legal. Elon nor his group do not need to be vetted by any LEO. Oh, and this is a good one. For what reason would any LEO arrest him, under what charges? Everything he is doing is completely above board and absolutely legal. FYI Trump has already fired IGs and agency heads. Many of the later resigned before he had a chance to fire them e.g., head of SSA. I think you need to do some serious vetting before making comments that show you have not. And by the way, I know not whether your reference to Elon’s hires as “whiz children” was meant to be derogatory or not. True, one of them cannot legally drink, but you need to read their bios before calling them children. They are far from being “children.” And do you know what happened on this day 80 years ago. I’m sure you don’t, but the vast majority of them were what you call “children.” Oh, and by the way, thank you for you remarkable comments.
I reckon little Ms. Jamie Lee isn’t going to respond with a plethora of more misinformation and outright lies?
You certainly have quite a lot so say. Most of us who follow Jim’s blog have some knowledge of one another and mostly some commonality of opinion. If we are to take you at all seriously, we need to know something more about you. Having checked around, it appears no one has ever heard of you, nor been aware of any previous comments you might have posted.
Are you among the majority of us who have served our Country in the military?
Have you read Jim’s book about his long and distinguished career in the United States Marine Corp?
How did you come to know of Jim’s Blog?
What sort of background/credentials do you have that enable you to offer your assertions with such certainty?
Honestly, we would all like to know. That might help us understand and perhaps appreciate where you are coming from.
Please, by all means, enlighten us.
Can the SSA possibly be this inefficient without some kind of major collusion going on?
Someone (?) is getting those checks and cashing them. What is to stop a spouse from not reporting a spouse’s death?
I’m all in on Musk and DOGE! Huge waste everywhere! I will temper this with the thought that being on the database with a “False” alone is not enough to indicate thousands/millions of dead folks are receiving payments. I will have to wait for the upcoming audits. My early job at BestFoods Int’l was Benefits Director. We used to audit pensioners’ payments to ensure they were indeed alive. I found one very elderly guy whose check endorsement signature matched, not only his pension application papers but also his work application from 40 years earlier. Turns out he couldn’t write so his wife signed everything for him. Signatures all matched! No shit!. Due to community relations in that small plant we did not demand our $$$ back, but stepped up our checking on all retirees. We provided FREE $5,000 life insurance to retirees. Surviving spouses rushed to get that $$$, thereby alerting us that we needed to either stop the pension or pay the survivor benefit. $5k death benefit costs less then years of $10k or more pension.
I agree that it seems extraordinary that this has been going on this long without someone doing something about it. BUT I know how civil servants think and work. Dealt with them for all of my young adult life. To do something about this meant more work, which is definitely something they do not want. My question is what exactly does “false” mean to the SSA.
Dumbfounding that such idiots cannot figure this is flat out impossible! Great reason to clean house and competitent people in their and get coopreation with other agencies to resolve these amazing ancient bogus humans they are paying. DB Wright. Semper Fi. PS. I’m 83 yrs old and alive~