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Nexus X HumectressMusk has implied 150-year-olds are getting checks but experts say he’s mistaken.
President Donald Trump and Elon Musk, in their hunt for “fraud, waste and abuse” in the federal government, are falsely implying millions of dead Americans are receiving Social Security benefits, experts told ABC News.
It started in the Oval Office last week when Musk — facing reporters for the first time since the Department of Government Efficiency began its aggressive overhaul of the federal government — said he found “crazy things” in the Social Security system, including, he said, people who are “150 years old.”
The billionaire has only built on that claim on social media, including screenshots of data he said shows millions of people marked as “alive” in the Social Security system when they clearly can’t be.
“Maybe Twilight is real and there are a lot of vampires collecting Social Security,” he wrote in one post.
MORE: Top Social Security official steps down after clash with DOGE, sources say
Then, on Tuesday, Trump repeated many of the same numbers Musk put out as he read from an extensive list at a news conference in Mar-a-Lago.
“Now, the big thing is, how many of these people got paid? Where are they getting paid? Where are they getting paid? How many of them were getting paid Social Security, because that’s — if that’s the case, it’s a massive fraud,” Trump, indicating shock, told reporters.
Social Security policy experts and economists told ABC News that they are getting it wrong, contending Musk is misreading the agency’s records system.
The Social Security Administration (SSA) has multiple databases, including one that gets sent to the Treasury Department each month outlining who is receiving payments.
According to agency statistics, of the 67 million people who receive Social Security benefits, only 0.1% are over the age of 100.
“So, when they’re throwing around numbers like tens of millions of dead people are getting Social Security, well there’s only 67 million total. What are they talking about? Half the people are actually dead? The numbers are so ridiculous. It’s not true,” said Kathleen Romig, the director of Social Security and disability policy at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
