Q&A of the Day – How Much Fraud is Taking Place w/Social Security
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Today’s Entry: @brianmuddradio Please investigate S.S. fraud. Is it true that people who are said to be hundreds of years old receive Social Security? That’s obvious fraud!
Bottom Line: From funding Peruvian transgendered comic book heroes through USAID to the actual retirement mine in Pennsylvania – there have been no shortage of obvious areas of waste, fraud and abuse of taxpayer dollars that have been exposed by DOGE. However, what Elon Musk indicated may be happening with Social Security payments, if true, would be without a doubt the biggest fraud in American history.
The original post on X from Musk about Social Security fraud said this: 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 included a chart showing people as old as 369 years old collecting Social Security – hence the Twilight reference from Musk – because indeed only vampires or a something of a Biblical nature could be playing out for that to be the case. However, that was actually the first significant clue that there was something more to the story...I’ll explain.
The oldest living person is currently a Brazilian who is 116 years old. The oldest living American is a 114-year-old woman in Pennsylvania. That would necessarily mean any payments to a person older than 114 would be illegitimate. According to the chart Musk posted, approximately 14 million Social Security recipients are older than 114. Now I mentioned that there was a quick clue that there was more to the story. So, let's explore it...
Social Security was established in 1935. It’s only been around for not quite 90 years. Even if someone was 100 at the time the program was established, they’d still “only” be 190 years old today. According to Musk’s data there are thousands receiving Social Security above that age. Why does that simple example matter? Well...we didn’t have Social Security numbers prior to the establishment of the Social Security Administration. Therefore, by definition, it’s not possible to have any Social Security numbers in existence that would show someone older than approximately 190 years old. That tells you that there’s a data error. So, about that...
There have been a series of audits over the years within Social Security with the most recent in 2023, that’s especially instructive in addressing potential fraudulent Social Security payments. The 2023 audit came with the heading: Numberholders Age 100 or Older Who Did Not Have Death Information on the Numident (more on the Numident situation in a moment). The results of the audit were this: SSA has not established controls to annotate death information on the Numident records of numberholders who exceeded maximum reasonable life expectancies. This finding lends credence to the concerns by Musk that Social Security numbers from deceased individuals are being abused. Also, of great significance, is that the audit found 18.9 million people born prior to 1920 that didn’t have death information properly recorded – meaning that the view of the possible is that 18.9 million bogus payouts could be happening through this type of fraud. So now the question becomes how many actually are?
In real-time it’s unclear exactly how many Social Security numbers of deceased individuals have been stolen and used for illegal collections. In 2023 we had a pretty good idea. During the most recent audit, it was found that of the 18.9 million people who were shown as potentially active in the Social Security database, who’re too old to be alive, payouts were only going out to 44,000 – or in other words, only two tenths of 1% of Social Security numbers open to potential abuse through this method were activity being abused. It isn’t nothing. That’s still hundreds of millions of dollars in abuse per year proven to have been occurring through this type of fraud. Still- it's nowhere close to what it was initially shown to have been. However, having nearly 19 million Social Security records not properly accounted for is a huge issue that needs to be addressed. How did it happen that so many Americans didn’t have death information properly accounted for and are now shown with vampire-like ages?
Social Security data has undergone two major conversions since the program's inception. From the mid-1930's into the 1970’s the process was completely manual. Starting in the 1970’s, an electronic database was created for the storage of Social Security information called NUMIDENT. That database was used until 2007 – when cloud-based storage of information began. Human error and conversion errors played a role in this process. With the conversion of manual information in the 1970’s there were multiple points of failure and the explanation for crazy birthdates could have been as simple as a typo as millions of records were being keyed into an electronic system. In the 2007 conversion it appears that certain fields for original NUMIDENT files didn’t accurately convert to the modern system... As the saying goes...garbage in, garbage out. There is an explanation for all of this. But the bottom line is this...
18.9 million Social Security numbers aren’t being abused, however the potential for them to be abused is there and reform is needed. On that note, notably, when recommendations were issued on back of the 2023 audit, it was noted by the auditors: SSA disagreed with our recommendations. Clearly a cleaning of the house within the Social Security Administration is needed.