When Elon Musk announced in February that there were 10 million Social Security numbers belonging to holders apparently aged 120 years and older, instead of acknowledging the great potential for fraudulent activity, the corporate media downplayed the concerns. They insisted that Social Security fraud is “not very common” and maligned the Trump administration’s efforts to purge the federal government of waste and abuse.
However, multiple instances of Social Security fraud confirmed in April alone are a reminder that the system has enabled abuse for years.
In late March, DOGE announced that, following a “major cleanup” of records, 9.9 million number holders listed with ages 120 years and older “have now been marked deceased.” (While people do live past 100, the oldest person who ever lived in modern times was Jeanne Louise Calment, of France, who died in 1997 at 122 years old.)
Corporate media and so-called experts have claimed that the listed ages of these centenarian number holders may be the result of “coding quirks” in the system and that efforts to mark these number holders as deceased could lead to more errors. But this does not change the fact that unused Social Security numbers marked as live are ripe for fraud.
What can you do with a spare Social Security number? You could register to vote again or sign up for social welfare, like housing, health insurance, cash assistance, and SNAP. Noncitizens can get a job, and of course, collect Social Security retirement or disability benefits.
Last month, a White House fact sheet, citing an inspector general report from 2024, noted how “The Social Security Administration made an estimated $72 billion in improper payments between 2015 and 2022.”
Hellbound and Down 