The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) in just over two weeks has found and marked dead nearly 7.1 million Social Security number-holders who were listed as above the age of 120.
The group headed by ‘first buddy’ Elon Musk revealed on Sunday it still has to mark as deceased 5 million Americans currently listed as eligible for federal benefits in the government systems.
The Social Security Administration (SSA) is facing a massive overhaul by President Donald Trump aimed at ‘transparency initiatives.’
The reforms, coming amid a significant workforce reduction as a result from voluntary departures and staff reassignments, includes public disclosures of internal decision-making and reports on customer service metrics such as call wait times.
Perhaps most importantly is the changes to identity verification requirements after DOGE found millions of Americans still in the systems with impossible ages ranging from 120 all the way up into the 300s.
Now more than 7 million number holders in the Social Security databases have been marked as dead by DOGE after it discovered troves of individuals eligible for benefits who are above 120-years-old
Elon Musk’s DOGE is conducting the clean-up of Social Security Administration databases, which includes all those with a SSA number, making them eligible for benefits either now or in the future
‘President Trump has been clear that good government must serve the People,’ SSA’s acting commissioner Lee Dudek said in a statement on Monday about the overhaul.
‘This begins with being transparent in how its government makes decisions and operates as good stewards of the resources entrusted to it.’
Any number holder listed above the age of 120 is a target for DOGE in its clearing out of the SSA systems.
While it’s unclear how many of these deceased or ‘fake’ number holders were receiving benefits, it’s likely that at least some were dead Americans still being sent checks from the SSA.
Musk has admitted that most of what he sees as inappropriate government spending is waste of taxpayer funds while only some amounts to intentional fraud.
Fiserv CEO Frank Bisignano is appearing before the Senate Finance Committee for a hearing on his nomination to be Social Security Administration Commissioner.
DOGE is publishing each week a list of how many number holders have been marked as dead who were previous in the ‘living count’
The agency is one of DOGE’s top focuses as it conducts an audit of the systems to clear out all number holders who are not actually social security eligible Americans.
The clean-up began on March 8 and since then 1.8 million listed between the age of 120 and 129 have been removed. Meanwhile, roughly 4.9 million in the system between the ages of 130 and 149 are marked as deceased.
Another 407,004 between 150 and 159 years of age were listed as social security eligible in the government’s system until the DOGE update on March 24.
