Trump and Musk's snipe hunt for Social Security fraud

Musk hunt for Social Security fraud is a sham

Jake Johnson for Common Dreams

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An internal Trump administration document reportedly shows that anti-fraud checks recently installed at the Social Security agency have found just two cases of potentially improper benefit claims out of more than 110,000—a rate of 0.0018%.

The documents, first reported Thursday by Nextgov/FCW, further undercut Donald Trump and billionaire Elon Musk's narrative that Social Security is brimming with fraud. Musk falsely claimed in March that "40% of the calls into Social Security were fraudulent."

The anti-fraud checks for Social Security have been applied only to benefit claims made over the phone. According to the internal document, "No significant fraud has been detected from the flagged cases." Earlier this year, amid widespread outrage, the Social Security Administration (SSA) walked back a proposal to scrap many of its phone-based benefit claim services.

Nextgov/FCW noted Thursday that the Trump administration's deployment of the anti-fraud tools beginning last month "did cause delays, as SSA changed its phone procedures to add the checks on the backend."

"The lags stem from the three-day hold placed on telephone claims in order to run the anti-fraud [checks], a move that 'delays payments and benefits to customers, despite an extremely low risk of fraud,'" Nextgov/FCW reported, citing the internal document.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) said in a statement that "the Trump-Musk Social Security takeover has only meant more chaos and confusion for Americans."

"Every one of DOGE's so-called 'mistakes' is a backdoor cut to people's benefits," said Warren. "There's nothing efficient about making it harder for people to access the checks they’ve earned and are owed."

On social media, Warren called the revelations in the internal administration document "a HUGE scandal."

It's long been clear that Social Security fraud is minuscule, with an inspector general report published last year estimating that just 0.84% of Social Security benefits paid out between 2015 and 2022 were dispensed improperly—and even those improper payments were not necessarily fraudulent.

The new reporting out Thursday bolstered warnings that the Trump administration's hunt for fraud is a mere pretext for slashing Social Security benefits and weakening the program.

"Turns out there ISN'T rampant Social Security fraud, but Elon's witch hunt, driven by his insane conspiracy theories, IS keeping seniors from getting their benefits as quickly as they should be," Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) wrote on social media. "THIS is Republican governing: hunting for nonexistent fraud while breaking Social Security."

Frank Bisignano, the newly confirmed SSA administrator, has close ties to Musk's Department of Government Efficiency and has defended the president's false claim that tens of millions of "dead" people are receiving Social Security benefits.

CNN reported earlier this week that as SSA combs "through its databases to check whether beneficiaries are alive or dead" at Trump and Musk's behest, agency staffers are "seeing more people coming in to be resurrected" after being falsely deemed deceased.

"I've been saying it all along," former SSA chief Martin O'Malley wrote Thursday. "Elon Musk is the biggest fraud, not Social Security."