It's a stunning claim about government waste, but one that is not true.
President Donald Trump and billionaire Elon Musk say the Social Security Administration is sending out fraudulent payments in the names of millions of people listed as 100 years or older who've been dead for years.
"They're obviously fraudulent or incompetent," Trump said during a news conference Feb. 18. "If you take all of those millions of people off Social Security, all of a sudden we have a very powerful Social Security."
Trump echoed Musk who posted online, "Having tens of millions of people marked in Social Security as 'ALIVE' when they are definitely dead is a HUGE problem."
Musk is correct that many people are erroneously classified as among the living by the Social Security Administration.
Nearly 19 million people aged 100 or older were still listed as alive, including about 11 million born in 1899 or earlier who had not been removed from the books, according to a 2023 report by the Social Security Administration's Office of Inspector General.
The report discovered just 44,000 centenarians actually got money from the agency. It's unclear how many of those checks went to living recipients, but the number is about half of all Americans alive who've reached triple digits. The report said "almost none" of the people likely dead but still on the Social Security rolls actually had payments sent out in their names.
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Multiple audits over the years have faulted the Social Security Administration for not doing a better job updating records to reflect the deaths of millions of Americans. Databases with outdated information about Social Security beneficiaries invite fraud, auditors have found.
Musk has also said payments were going out to people in the system aged 150 years old, but that is likely also false. Social Security systems automatically cut off benefits for anyone recorded as 115 or older.
