Elon Musk reveals that millions of records in Social Security database are for people between 100 and 159 years old

In the framework for shrinking public spending and making the federal government more efficient, Elon Musk, at the head of the DOGE, posted the following message on his X account on Monday.

"According to the Social Security database, these are the numbers of people in each age bucket with the death field set to FALSE!

Maybe Twilight is real and there are a lot of vampires collecting Social Security."

The post shows that there are millions of people collecting Social Security whose ages are as follows:

The post presents a chart indicating that there are more than 20 million registered persons aged 100 years or older, including more than 3.9 million in the 130 to 139 age range, more than 3.5 million in the 140 to 149 age range and more than 1.3 million in the 150 to 159 age range.

In addition, the owner of X noted in a post that "the logic flow diagram for the Social Security system looks INSANE. No one person actually knows how it works. The payment files that move between Social Security and Treasury have significant inconsistencies that are not reconciled. It’s wild.”

Musk also points out that this discovery is a big problem.

"Having tens of millions of people marked in Social Security as “ALIVE” when they are definitely dead is a HUGE problem.

Obviously.

Some of these people would have been alive before America existed as a country. Think about that for a second …”

The Real Data

According to the Pew Research Center, The United States has approximately 100,000 centenarians, but none are older than 114, and the oldest documented age for anyone in modern times was 122, according to the Guinness Book.

Errors in sending Social Service payments

According to PoliFact, a website created for fact-checking journalism, despite errors about the age of people registered, Social Social Security sometimes sends payments incorrectly.

The sheer scope of the agency's payments (more than $1 trillion a year) means that even a small fraction of errors add up quickly.

Between fiscal years 2015 and 2022, which include Trump's first presidency, the Social Security Administration sent nearly $71.8 billion in improper payments, according to a July 2024 report from the agency's inspector general. The inspector general's office called the improper payments "a longstanding challenge."

A report from the inspector general in November 2021 found $298 million in after-death payments to about 24,000 beneficiaries. (About $84 million was returned, according to the report).

Possible solution?

The Social Security Advisory Board, a group of outside experts, has periodically issued bipartisan recommendations to improve the agency's payment accuracy record, such as moving death data collection to the Treasury Department.

Trump's request to Musk

Whatever the explanations, what is clear is that the DOGE team and the Republican Administration have a major task ahead to look after the money of citizens across the country.

Donald Trump was decisive when he put Elon Musk in charge of the DOGE. The Republican gave him the mission of eliminating waste, fraud and abuse in government operations.