Elon Musk, current director of the newly created Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), revealed surprising findings about a massive fraud in the unemployment insurance system in the United States during the administration of Democrat Joe Biden.
According to DOGE, since 2020 nearly 400 million dollars have been paid in unemployment benefits to non-existent people, including individuals not yet born or with biologically impossible ages.
DOGE, an initiative driven by President Donald Trump to detect and eliminate inefficient spending and fraud within the federal government, analyzed a sample of unemployment insurance claims since the start of the pandemic.
El presidente Trump ha confirmado que Musk continuará a la cabeza del DOGE
The report found that 9,700 people with birth dates scheduled for more than 15 years in the future received approximately 69 million dollars in benefits. In a particularly absurd case, someone with a birth date in the year 2154 would have collected 41,000 dollars.
Meanwhile, DOGE reported that 24,500 people over 115 years old, age beyond any official longevity record, would have received 59 million dollars. On the other hand, 28,000 minors between 1 and 5 years old also would have claimed 254 million dollars in unemployment benefits.
"Your taxes were being used to pay fraudulent unemployment claims from people born in the future!" Musk exclaimed in a post on X, calling the findings so unbelievable that he had to "read it several times to understand it."
He also added with irony: "The oldest living person in the U.S. is 114 years old, so it's safe to assume that anyone 115 years or older collecting unemployment... is dead."
El informe encontró decenas de miles de personas que reclamaban seguros de desempleo con fechas de nacimiento programadas para dentro de 15 años
DOGE highlighted that there was no validation or control system to prevent people with impossible or not yet born ages from entering the benefits system. The lack of basic verification, such as birth date checks, allowed thousands of fraudulent applications to go undetected.
The Secretary of the Department of Labor, Lori Chavez-DeRemer, also spoke on the matter. In a statement, she called DOGE's discoveries "unbelievable" and promised that the agency will work hard to recover the embezzled funds. "We will catch these thieves and continue working to eradicate egregious frauds. Accountability has arrived," she stated.
Meanwhile, Republican Senator Mike Lee of Utah replied to the findings with a direct criticism: "Reckless incompetence."
These findings have sparked a national debate on the efficiency of the public benefits system and the urgent need to modernize and strengthen verification controls in government systems.
Musk has stated that he will continue to lead DOGE's efforts to identify fraud, abuse, and unnecessary spending within the federal government, a mission that, according to his words, "is just beginning."
La secretaria de Trabajo aseguró que buscarán recuperar los fondos malversados
