During a recent rally in support of the losing Wisconsin Supreme Court candidate, Brad Schimel, Elon Musk claimed that the government was about to arrest a Social Security fraudster. Law enforcement officials were rightfully furious that Musk had disclosed public details about an ongoing investigation, during a political rally.
The truth is that there are always fraud cases under investigation. Musk hasn’t discovered anything new. The Social Security Administration has a robust set of systems in place to detect, prevent and catch fraudsters. In fact, Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency is weakening those systems and making fraud far more likely.
Social Security fraud is quite rare, partly because the Social Security Administration is so good at detecting it. Fraud represents just 0.00625 percent of all of Social Security’s expenditures, a far lower percentage than found in private sector insurance. Almost all forms of fraud involve the hijacking of benefits or Social Security Numbers from people who quickly notice and report it, resulting in the reversal of the fraud attempt.
Musk’s latest focus appears to be the vanishingly small amount of fraud that is attempted over the agency’s 1-800 number. Allegedly to prevent fraud, DOGE was about to stop letting most beneficiaries prove their identities over the phone to complete a benefit application or change their direct deposit information. Fortunately, pushback by the American people forced a reversal of that decision.
Again, the facts: Social Security receives 80 million calls a year from citizens on its 1-800 number. Musk and Vice President JD Vance have made the absurd claim that 40 percent of those calls — 32 million — are from “fraudsters who steal your direct deposits.” The truth is that only 1 in every 3,100 calls succeeds (for a brief time) at direct deposit fraud. That’s just 0.032 percent of all 1-800 calls. For everyone successful attempt at direct deposit hijacking, five are thwarted.
To address this relatively small amount of fraud compared to the total volume of legitimate calls, Musk’s minions were planning to force millions of additional people a year, many who have limited mobility, to travel in person to a field office. This same group has just pushed out 7,000 Social Security workers, with plans to lay off thousands more. This ensures that offices will be severely understaffed — or closed entirely, which would have forced beneficiaries to travel hundreds of miles and hours away.
Americans, thanks to Musk, were going to be forced off very safe phones to go to already overcrowded field offices. Or, they could have attempted to navigate the Social Security website, where there is more fraud (though still small) and increasingly frequent crashes, thanks again to Elon Musk.
Moreover, because neither the change nor its reversal were well explained or thought through, fraudsters are reportedly posing as Social Security employees. These scammers are contacting beneficiaries, and threatening that their benefits will be suspended, if they don’t provide personal information to prove their identities. In that way, Trump and Musk are opening the door to fraud. They are creating a climate of fear and uncertainty about Social Security benefits that makes seniors far more susceptible to fraud attempts.
Furthermore, Trump and Musk are spouting other lies about Social Security’s supposed fraud. They claim that 150-year-olds are getting benefits. In fact, the debunked claims simply show their ignorance about Social Security.
What DOGE “whiz kids” apparently found was that some 150-year-olds who are not receiving benefits still have active Social Security numbers for completely legitimate reasons, such as a living relative receiving benefits based on their earnings record. Appropriately, the Social Security Administration hasn’t wasted its dedicated revenue tracking down the date of death of people who don’t receive benefits.
On the “Joe Rogan Experience,” with millions of Americans listening, Musk slandered Social Security as a “Ponzi scheme.” What an outrageous thing to say about a program that hasn’t missed a payment in nearly 90 years.
Social Security has survived wars, recessions and pandemics. But Elon Musk and Donald Trump are doing their very best to kill it.
In mid-February, they forced out Social Security’s acting commissioner after she refused to hand over the American people’s personal Social Security data to DOGE. They replaced her with a handpicked candidate, Leland Dudek. Since then, they have demolished the agency’s workforce, including many of the people responsible for preventing fraud. That includes Social Security’s Inspector General, who was responsible for oversight.
DOGE is creating waste, fraud and abuse. Trump’s acting commissioner admitted as much in a leaked email exchange about the decision to cancel contracts that allowed Maine parents to register their newborn children for Social Security cards at the hospital.
Social Security staffers explained that cancelling the contracts “would result in improper payments and potential for identity theft.” Having admitted that he was acting at the instructions of the Trump administration, Dudek replied: “Please cancel the contracts. While our improper payments will go up, and fraudsters may compromise identities, no money will go from the public trust to a petulant child.”
While Dudek himself was the one actually acting like a “petulant child,” he was referring to Maine Gov. Janet Mills (D), who stood up to Donald Trump’s bullying of transgender children. In other words, the Trump administration was more than happy to create waste, fraud and abuse — as long as it served Donald Trump’s political purposes.
If and when Elon Musk seeks to claim credit for the arrest of a fraudster, know that the successful, years-long investigation is thanks to the hard work of our civil servants. And the next time you hear Musk nattering on about Social Security “fraud,” remember that his DOGE operatives are the ones creating it.
Martin O’Malley served as governor of Maryland from 2007 to 2015 and commissioner of the Social Security Administration from 2023 to 2024. Nancy Altman is president of Social Security Works.