DOGE Says It Found $312 Million in Loans That Were Given to Children During Pandemic

About 5,600 loans worth $312 million went ’to borrowers whose only listed owner was 11 years old or younger at the time of the loan,' DOGE said.

Elon Musk in the Oval Office of the White House on Feb. 11, 2025. Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) said over the weekend that it found that the Small Business Administration (SBA) granted thousands of loans worth hundreds of millions of dollars to individuals who had an age listed as 11 years old or younger.

In a post on social media platform X on March 8 that was reposted by Elon Musk, who leads the department, DOGE wrote that in the COVID-19 pandemic years of 2020 and 2021, the SBA granted 5,593 loans worth $312 million “to borrowers whose only listed owner was 11 years old or younger at the time of the loan.”

“While it is possible to have business arrangements where this is legal, that is highly unlikely for these 5,593 loans, as they all also used [a Social Security number] with the incorrect name,” the post reads.

DOGE and the SBA are now working to investigate the matter, according to the post. The Epoch Times contacted the SBA for comment on March 9 but did not receive a response by publication time.

Also on March 8, DOGE wrote in a separate post that it found that the SBA issued 3,095 loans for $333 million to borrowers whose age was listed at more than 115 years old. Those borrowers, it stated, were listed as alive in the Social Security database, and in one instance, a person recorded as being 157 years old received loans worth $36,000, including under the Paycheck Protection Program and as an Economic Injury Disaster Loan.

Also on March 8, DOGE stated that a Department of Agriculture contract worth $10.3 million that was for “identifying unnecessary contracts” had been canceled, noting that it was one of 162 nonessential contracts that had been terminated.

Since the start of the second Trump administration, DOGE has been combing through federal agency data to find waste that it can slash in a bid to save money. However, the organization isn’t without its critics and has faced a bevy of lawsuits, including ones questioning DOGE’s legality and the role that Musk is playing.

On March 7, a group of labor unions asked a federal court for an emergency order to stop DOGE from accessing the Social Security data of millions of Americans.

The motion for emergency relief was filed in federal court in Maryland by the legal services group Democracy Forward against the Social Security Administration and its acting commissioner, Leland Dudek. The unions want the court to block DOGE’s access to the vast troves of personal data held by the agency.

Judges have raised questions in several cases about DOGE’s sweeping cost-cutting efforts, conducted with little public information about its staffing and operations. But judges have not always agreed that the alleged risks are imminent enough to block DOGE from government systems.

DOGE has accessed government databases, including at the Treasury Department and Internal Revenue Service. The Trump administration has said generally that the efforts are aimed at eliminating waste and fraud in government.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.