The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) on Wednesday said that it discovered tens of thousands of unemployment claims for improbably old and young claimants were approved in the years after 2020.
Elon Musk’s group wrote in a post on X that its initial review of unemployment insurance claims since 2020 revealed a significant number of unemployment claims from people over 115 years old and between the ages of 1 and 5.
DOGE said that “24.5k people over 115 years old claimed $59M in benefits” while “28k people between 1 and 5 years old claimed $254 million in benefits” and “9.7k people with birth dates over 15 years in the future claimed $69M in benefits.” It added, “In one case, someone with a birthday in 2154 claimed $41k.”
The Labor Department confirmed that millions of dollars in unemployment insurance went to fraudulent recipients identified by DOGE.
DOGE CUTS DRIVE LAYOFFS IN MARCH TO HIGHEST LEVEL SINCE PANDEMIC
“This is another incredible discovery by the DOGE team, finding nearly $400 million in fraudulent unemployment payments,” Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer told FOX Business. “The Labor Department is committed to recovering Americans’ stolen tax dollars. We will catch these thieves and keep working to root out egregious fraud – accountability is here.”
DOGE has conducted similar efforts in Social Security to root out numberholders from databases who are listed as age 120 or older.
The group said it has marked 9.9 million Social Security numberholders listed as age 120 or older as deceased, with about 2 million to go as of late March.
SOCIAL SECURITY CONDUCTING ‘MAJOR’ RECORDS CLEANUP, MARKING 9.9M LISTED AGE 120+ AS DECEASED
After Elon Musk suggested earlier this year that Social Security benefits have been paid to recipients well over the age of 100, acting Social Security Commissioner Lee Dudek responded saying, “The reported data are people in our records with a Social Security number who do not have a date of death associated with their record. These individuals are not necessarily receiving benefits.”
DOGE and the Social Security Administration (SSA) have faced criticism over incidents in which living recipients have been incorrectly flagged as deceased, causing their benefits to be halted.
The SSA said in a subsequent statement that while the agency receives millions of death reports each year, “less than one-third of 1 percent are erroneously reported deaths that need to be corrected.”
“Instances when a person is erroneously reported as deceased to Social Security can be devastating to the individual, spouse, and dependent children,” SSA wrote. “Benefits are stopped in the short term which can cause financial hardship until fixed and benefits restored, and the process to prove an erroneous death will always seem too long and challenging.”
SSA says that numberholders who have been incorrectly labeled as deceased should contact their local Social Security office as soon as possible and “be prepared to bring at least one piece of current (not expired) original form of identification.”
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