Acting Social Security chief opens up on DOGE, Musk’s claims

The acting head of the Social Security Administration opened up on the activities of Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) at the agency, as well as claims about millions of dead people receiving benefits.

Acting Commissioner Lee Dudek said that DOGE “is a critical part of President Trump’s commitment to finding fraud, waste, and abuse, and better ways for the government to function to support its people.” 

“I want to be very clear about the DOGE personnel who are now working at Social Security,” Dudek said. “DOGE personnel CANNOT make changes to agency systems, benefit payments, or other information. They only have READ access. DOGE personnel do not have access to data related to a court ordered temporary restraining order, current or future. DOGE personnel must follow the law and if they violate the law they will be referred to the Department of Justice for possible prosecution.”

Dudek’s statement also discussed reports about Social Security beneficiaries over the age of 100 receiving benefits, which followed comments Musk made in the Oval Office with President Trump last week.

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Elon Musk claimed there were people receiving Social Security listed as being well over the age of 100. (Saul Loeb/Pool/AFP via Getty Images / Getty Images)

“I also want to acknowledge recent reporting about the number of people older than age 100 who may be receiving benefits from Social Security,” Dudek said. “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.”

Musk said that the Social Security system has “people in there that are about 150 years old” and that “there are a whole bunch of Social Security payments where there’s no identifying information, like, why is there no identifying information?”

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Social Security ((Photo illustration by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images) / Getty Images)

Later, in a post on X, Musk posted a picture of a spreadsheet he said was from the Social Security database showing the numbers of people in each age bucket with the death field set to false. It showed more than 17 million such records for people over the age of 100.

In 2015, the Social Security Administration (SSA) and its inspector general looked into the number of people in the system with no death record who were listed as being over the age of 112. SSA found 6.5 million numberholders aged 112 or older with no death information in the system, but noted that other records suggested the majority of them were deceased. 

Of those, SSA issued payments to 266 numberholders – though the IG’s review indicated only 13 beneficiaries were likely age 112 or older, while in the remaining 253 cases there were discrepancies in SSA’s records that indicated the beneficiary wasn’t actually that old. 

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Following the review, the SSA decided not to proceed with adding presumed death information to the records because it would be costly to implement, provide little benefit to the agency and duplicate other information already available in government data exchanges.